Happy Birthday and Wasteland Princess
by Keith B. Real
Summary: MacCready is expelled from Little Lamplight, much to Princess' delight. After finding that Big Town isn't all it was cracked up to be, his career a civic leader enters a new phase.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One.**

Robert Joseph MacCready opened his eyes and sat up in his bed. Groaning, he reached for his helmet but felt only the splintery wood of the makeshift pile he used for a nightstand.

"Happy birthday, jerk," said a familiar, annoying voice as his helmet was shoved into his chest. He looked up into the face of a smiling, pale girl with a dirty face. "Ready for your party?"

MacCready's fist clenched and he considered punching the girl in the nose. He had done it once already, years ago when the girl thought she was going to be the Princess of Little Lamplight. The punch had earned the girl her name, Princess.

"After it's over, I won't have to see your ugly god damned face for at least a year. Maybe longer if your dumb ass gets killed on the way to Big Town," he said.

Princess smiled, showing her teeth. MacCready thought he might knock one out as a going away present, but held himself in check. Thinking he was getting soft in his old age, and stood up, shouldered his gun, and walked past Princess who followed him closely as he headed out of the wooden shack and around a rickety boardwalk that was built over a pool of cave water.

The board led to a tunnel lit by decaying bulbs and lamps. MacCready could imagine Princess behind him, grinning with her hands clasped. No one would challenge her leadership once he was gone, and MacCready had the sinking feeling she would run Little Lamplight into the ground after his exile.

A crowd had gathered by the front gate. Seeing the faces of a few Lamplighters he respected made him feel better about Princess being left in charge. Lucy and Éclair weren't total fools and might keep Princess in line. He admitted to himself that the one task Princess had to not fuck up was shooting any mungo that came to the gate. Organizing the scavenging runs could be left to someone less crazy.

A child with snot on his sleeves presented MacCready with a blue birthday hat. He took the hat and brought it down on the kid's head, flattening the hat and sending the kind to his knees, crying. "Happy birthday to you," the crowd began to sing. "Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear, mungo. Happy birthday to you!"

Mungo. He was now a mungo. MacCready hated mungos and took pride in the ill-will he was able to muster when they came around. One of his fondest memories was the day Princess herself thought he had gone too far when he began shooting at a group of starved mungos who had come to the cave begging for food and water.

After the song ended, the Lamplighters filed back inside, leaving MacCready on the other side of the gate as it began to closed. He nodded to Lucy and Éclair, who nodded back with sad eyes. Princess grinned at him, waving. "Bye, mungo!" she called.

When the gate was shut, MacCready headed up towards the cave's entrance and went through the wooden door to the outside. The entrance to Lamplight Caverns was snuggled under a mountain of rock. The shone into MacCready's eyes, and he squinted while walking to the top of the hill where an old school bus sat, rusting. He remembered Joseph saying something once about the bus being the same one that brought the first Lamplighters to the caverns, but MacCready had never cared too much about history as it was mostly about mungos.

Taking a deep breath, he decided to look on the bright side of things. He would see Éclair and Lucy again in a few short years and there was of course the prospect of Big Town. No more cave fungus, no more fighting off raiders and muties. It was time to live the good life.

Heading east along a ruined, cracked road, the dark side of the equation arose in his mind. He would likely be seeing Princess in another year, and there was still the matter of getting to Big Town. He knew roughly where it was, but he also knew from scavenging that the wasteland was not a place to be if you didn't know where you were headed. He patted his rifle and made sure he had access to his knife and kept walking down the road, hoping Big Town wasn't too far off.

After an hour of not being the mayor of Little Lamplight, of not having to solve the problems of half a dozen retarded brats, of not having to listen to Princess's mouth, of not having to make sure the guards at the front gate didn't fall asleep, he began to realize that just how much there was for him not to do.

The realization made him feel light, free, and empty.

"Fuck," he said. "I'm a fucking mungo."

No sooner had he verbalized his new station in life did he notice three figures walking towards him down the road next to a pile of ruined cars. He squinted and saw that they were decked head to toe in metal power armor, the color of which blended them in with the rusted piles they stepped past.

They were also being followed by a spherical , hovering robot, a Mr. Gutsy. MacCready had always wanted one for the front gate, but they had never been able to salvage one they could make work.

He kept walking and stopped in front of the three armored figures. "Move along, local," one said. Two were carrying laser rifles while one had a mini gun slung low by his hips. The color of their armor meant they would have little to say to him, and wouldn't deviate so much as a step from their path to help or harm him.

He knew two things about people with power armor. Firstly, they were not to be fucked with. Secondly, they either called themselves the Brotherhood of Steel, or the Outcasts. By the color of their armor, MacCready could tell he was dealing with Outcasts.

"You assholes come by Big Town?" he asked. It wouldn't hurt to at least attempt to get intelligence about the terrain ahead.

"There are no big towns back there," one said. It was hard to tell which one, as they didn't turn to face him and were wearing helmets. "Just waste."

"Any raiders or muties?"

"Not anymore," one said; MacCready suspected the one with the mini gun.

MacCready thought it best he keep walking The power armored men weren't looking to talk and he was burning daylight.

**To be continued…**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two.**

Something about the broken wall of old cars and debris made MacCready's stomach feel heavy. Whatever the place had been, the men in the power armor had been right, there was nothing now but waste.

MacCready saw that the sun was sinking low, and knew he had to find cover before nightfall. He walked towards a breach in the wall with his gun at the ready and stepped carefully over the broken and bent metal into the ruined town.

He didn't like what he saw on the other side, even though it meant he would have a place to sleep for the night. Simple houses, most now burnt or knocked down, stood in rows parallel to one another forming a street. To the north were scattered houses. At the end of the street before him was the town's true entrance, a wooden bridge across a moat of irradiated water and sharp, twisted steel. A guard house with its roof missing stood watch.

The feeling in his stomach grew worse as he walked down the street towards the bridge. He crossed it and turned back to the town. A board still hung on one of the bridge posts. Big Town it read.

Overcome with the urge to shoot someone in the face, MacCready ripped the sign down and stormed back down the street, entering the first house on his left. It was empty. Trashed. He went to the next house and found the same, only there were old blood stains on the walls of a back room and bullet holes. He went through each building, looking for an explanation, perhaps from a mouth he could punch, and found no one.

Standing in the building that served as the town's hospital, he was alone with the last patient. A skeleton on a cot. MacCready examined the bones, using what little Lucy had told him about first aid to glean any information he could. Whoever the owner of the bones had been, he, or she, had lived a hard life. In addition to the fresh breaks that never healed before the person died, there were a number of marks on the bones from old fractures that had mended over.

There was some light left, and MacCready used it to examine the town's fortifications. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he could distinguish the fresh damage from the battle that finally claimed Big Town, and damage that it had taken over time.

"Well fuck," MacCready said. "Fuck me."

The promise of Big Town had turned out to be one big cold turd.

"It's a lie. A fucking lie," he said, returning to the medical tent and shoving the skeleton off the cot. He laid down, knowing his thoughts would likely keep him awake for hours. Why had no one from Big Town come back and said anything? Did anyone from Little Lamplight ever really live in Big Town, or did they go somewhere else?

A better question was who had destroyed Big Town and where were they now? He wondered if he should go back to Little Lamplight and tell the others.

No. At least, not yet. Princess would shoot him in the face if he came near the caverns. He remembered someone telling him that Princess had a crush on him, and he had nearly barfed. Somehow word got back to her and her love had turned to hate.

He had a few months before any Lamplighter was turned out, so there was time to do something. There was no way he could build a town that lived up to what everyone thought Big Town should be, but he might be able to make someplace as safe as Little Lamplight, only for mungos.

Mungos like himself.

***

When he woke up, the sun hadn't yet come over the horizon. He lie awake in the morning gloom and thought about food. He had packed some with him before leaving Little Lamplight. The good stuff, too, not that cave fungus Éclair was always inventing new ways to make taste like crap.

Not wanting to dip into his reserves, he sat up with a loud groan and began searching in the dim light for something to eat. Finding nothing in the medical building, he looked through the others, this time ignoring signs of battle and instead, focusing on the colorful boxes that usually signified pre-war eats.

He mostly found cleaning supplies, but managed to discover a box of Fancy Lad's snack cakes, which he devoured. MacCready also found something else. It was a dirty, half burnt notebook. Examining the cover, he read the words "Bittercups Dyary" scrawled with a red pen.

MacCready had learned to read mainly for the purposes of staving off boredom. Some books had interesting information about life before the war, little of which he believed. Flipping through Bittercup's diary, he made a wry face. Whoever she had been, her spelling was awful and her main mode of thought was the men she had dated. He recognized a few of them from when he was younger, and laughed when she mentioned Sticky.

"Sticky," MacCready said. "God, I hated that asshole."

He snorted and swore when he heard his voice crack on the word asshole. He really was getting to be soft.

MacCready found himself reading more of Bittercup's drivel, and was soon glad that he had. Scattered in bits and pieces were sentences that confirmed some of what MacCready had guessed. Big Town was constantly being hit by slavers and raiders. He was puzzled for a moment on what super mutant was, but from Bittercup's scant mentions of "gryne mussel men" he figured she meant muties.

"Big green assholes are out here, figures," MacCready said.

Bittercup mentioned Paradise Falls a number of times, a place MacCready knew of and hated. Towards the end of her diary, when the spelling became worse along with her handwriting, Bittercup talked about the super mutants a lot. It seemed that their raids became so frequent, raiders began leaving the place alone.

Bittercup's dairy soon became a list. Most names, a few MacCready knew, were listed as dead or carried off.

The carried off bit interested him the most. He didn't know muties kidnapped people and could only guess why they might want to. "Red sed they taek them to gurmantown and do sumthing too them there. i think its north"

"Germantown," MacCready said. "North."

Paradise Falls was to the northwest, and every Lamplighter's worst nightmare. They took slaves there and shipped them somewhere else. He didn't know where, but he knew that once someone went to Paradise Falls, they never came back. He had seen the place once while scavenging and knew it was not a destination that he wanted to mess around with, even if he was a mungo.

This Germantown was likely as bad if not worse, but something about it intrigued him. Why would muties…super mutants, take anyone anywhere? Slavers took slaves, but mutants took…he didn't know what, and found himself wanting to find out.

He took Bittercup's diary and a few more snack cake boxes back to the hospital building. Alone, he felt safe in the ruin. Raiders and slavers don't go to places where they don't think there's loot, this MacCready knew from living in a cave his entire life. He decided to make the ruins of Big Town his home, for now, and began to scavenge it for useful things to take north to Germantown.

**To be continued…**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three.**

Germantown was supposedly to the north. He knew he would find super mutants when he got there, but what he would run into on the way was a mystery. He kept his rifle at the ready and tried to spot trouble before it spotted him as he headed north along a ruined road.

He stopped at the river.

Crouching behind an ancient car that had been wrapped around an old, dead tree MacCready took the rifle scope out of his pack and fixed it to his rifle. He looked through it to spy on the bridge that was half sunk into the river. From the angle he was at, he could tell someone had used junk to repair the bridge into a state where it could handle foot traffic.

He spotted two human figures crouched beneath the bridge. He also noticed how small bits of junk had been evenly spread out in front of the bridge. Anyone walking through it might not notice anything out of place, but they would make a lot of noise as they walked, enough to alert the raiders hiding under the bridge. It was a trick they used in Little Lamplight, near the front gate.

MacCready was confident that he could kill the two raiders he could see within as many seconds. It was their friends he worried about.

Keeping on his stomach, MacCready crawled back away from the car and made his way east, down river for a better angle on the bridge. Hopefully he would find another crossing point, but raiders tended to force people's hands when it came to travel options.

He didn't find a spot to cross, but found a rock to hide behind that gave him a clear view of the raider camp bellow the bridge. Counting the two on lookout duty, there were ten in all and they were armed well enough to take on a large caravan.

MacCready swore quietly. He would likely have to head down river and find another place to cross, either that or take a dip in the irradiated water. None of these ideas seemed appealing.

He felt a tap on his left shoulder. His heart caught in his throat and as he spun to the left, he felt a skinless hand clamp over his mouth from the right and pull him backward to the ground. "Keep you're goddamn mouth shut if you enjoy breathin', kid," said a gravely voice. MacCready was on his back, looking up. He couldn't see his attacker's face because of the sun, but knew he was a ghoul.

The hand left MacCready's mouth and moved up to the ghoul's skinless lips. "Shhh," he said, moving around so that MacCready could get a better look at him. Unlike most ghouls MacCready had seen while scavenging, this one had a full head of hair and even a small black mustache. He was dressed in a dirty suit and wore a pair of black rimmed glasses. "I count ten of the fuckers," he said. "How many have you seen?"

"Ten," MacCready replied, confused. "They've got guns coming out their asses. I don't think we're crossing here."

"That's a load of crap," the ghoul said. "Those assholes can't tell a gun barrel from a dick. Do as I say and we'll clear 'em out so we can cross the river."

The ghoul moved next to MacCready and crouched by the rocks. MacCready could see that the ghoul was heavily armed himself. He leaned a shotgun on the rock and unshouldered a large scoped rifle, which he pointed at the bridge. "Here's what you're going to do," he said. "Circle around and come in from the far side. When you hear me shoot, you start shooting like hell and shout like you're crazy. Don't worry about hitting anything, you just need to make them think they're being fired on from that side of the river. When they take cover behind the bridge on this side, I'll pick them off."

"Are you fucking crazy? I don't even know you," MacCready said, not liking the idea of running distraction.

"Do it, or after I finish with them, I'm coming after you."

MacCready had been threatened by some pretty menacing people in his short life, but this ghoul seemed like he could have eaten all of them for a snack. Nodding, he crept low back the way he had come and circled around to the other side of the bridge as he had been told.

Taking cover behind a gnarled tree, he poked his head around it for one more look at the raiders before he launched his attack. Some were sitting around a small fire drinking, while others kept a watch on the road that lead to the bridge. MacCready took several deep breaths and waiting for the pounding in his head to slow down.

If the ghoul was full of it, he was dead. MacCready thought of his tone and the way he said things. He was sure of himself, that was certain, but it didn't come off as arrogance. MacCready had met quite a few people who couldn't back up their bluster and the mysterious ghoul didn't sound like one of them.

He heard the gunshot and saw one of the raiders watching the road fall, his head surrounded in a cloud of red. MacCready stepped out from behind the tree and started shooting into the camp with his rifle, screaming.

The raiders saw him and returned fire. He ducked behind the tree and kept his face down as wood splinters struck his head and hands. He held his gun around the tree and fired, knowing he wasn't likely hitting anything.

He heard a loud whizzing sound in the air and hear the dead branches of the tree clatter and snap. A moment later, there was an explosion behind him that forced him into the tree. Something stung his leg and more objects flew past his head. Forgetting his own attack, he fell to the ground, covered his head and stayed as low as he could as bullets flew past him.

He could hear the raiders shouting and soon everything was silent except for the pounding that was now in his ears, louder than every. MacCready sat up and looked at his leg. A piece of shrapnel had put a gash in his calf. He pulled up his pants leg and examined the wound. Dark blood was welling out of the cut, but it didn't look like it had hit an artery. Pulling a bandage out of his backpack, MacCready wiped the wound clean and wrapped it. He would clean it later, but he thought it best he rendezvous with the ghoul.

MacCready reached the bridge and saw the ghoul walking calmly over it. "Hey!" MacCready said, running up behind him. "What now?"

The ghoul stopped and turned to face MacCready. The ghoul's melted features were bent into a look of annoyance. "We cross the river, you dumb fuck," he said. "You can loot the bodies, I've got all the shit I need."

"Who the fuck are you?" MacCready asked, not sure why he wanted to know. The ghoul seemed like the type to shoot him for being annoying.

"Desmond," the ghoul said. "Now unless you know the way to Germantown, fuck off."

MacCready said nothing for a moment, shocked by the coincidence. Desmond was walking away when MacCready spoke again. "I've got an idea about where it is. I was headed there myself."

Desmond stopped, but didn't turn. "I swear, if you're fucking with me, you're meat. What the hell are you going to Germantown for?"

MacCready thought about where to begin. He thought too long. "Well?" Desmond shouted. "I ain't a fucking babysitter. I don't know what rock you crawled out from under, but by the look of you, you'd better crawl back."

"Big Town," MacCready finally said. He was now more angry with himself for being so afraid of Desmond. He was the former mayor of Little Lamplight, and a bad ass in his own right, he reminded himself. "Big Town was destroyed by muties…super mutants from Germantown. I need to go there and kill something."

"Super mutants?" Desmond said. "Those green, stupid mother fuckers? Shit." He turned and walked over to MacCready, rubbing his mustache and looking at something in the distance. "Alright, kid, I'll tell you this. Loot the raiders and get yourself some decent gear. Fix that leg of yours, too. I need something inside the Germantown prison and you're going to help me get it. While we're there, you can do whatever the fuck you want after I get what I need."

MacCready nodded, apprehensive about now having Desmond to contend with but at the same time glad he was on his side.

"Move!" Desmond shouted, prompting MacCready to limp down beneath the bridge to pick over the corpses of the defeated raiders.

**To be continued…**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four.**

The limp MacCready had developed kept him back a number of paces from Desmond, who had barely given him enough time to bandage his leg and take ammunition and a pistol from the dead raiders before setting off for Germantown.

The sun was in MacCready's face when he heard Desmond unsling his shotgun. He squinted in time to see the tips of black stingers scuttling down the broken road towards them. Desmond fired twice, obliterating the radscorpions before they got within striking distance. "Miserable bastards," he said, his voice like the gravel beneath their feet.

After a few minutes, Desmond was firing again. "Get over here and help me," he shouted. "Creepy bastards are everywhere."

MacCready drew his new 10mm pistol and joined Desmond's side at the top of a rise in the road where the sun wasn't blocking his view. Down a slope towards some old cars was a swarm of radscorpions. "Fuck," MacCready said. "You gotta be shitin' me, a fucking swarm?"

"Less talking, more shooting," Desmond said, and reached into his pocket. MacCready heard a pin be pulled on a grenade as he fired his pistol into the black clicking mass coming up the hill. He saw the grenade land and disappear under black, hard exoskeletons before exploding, sending body segments into the air along with green fluid.

The swarm kept coming. MacCready and Desmond's attacks did little to slow the tide as it gained ground. Desmond swore when the broken cars shifted and half a dozen radscorpions nearly three times the size of the others shuffled out from hiding and crawled over their smaller brethren. "To hell with it," he said. "Run."

"Fuck this," MacCready said, running after Desmond. He had seen radscorpions move in small packs of three or four, but nothing like the swarm behind them. Desmond was fast and interested in saving his own skin. MacCready couldn't blame him, and from the sound of pincers snipping behind him, he wished he would toss another grenade.

Fear took MacCready and spurred him on as his chest became tight and his legs burned. The radscorpions were close behind and there was another hill ahead, which Desmond reached the top of and disappeared over it.

Thinking the back of his pants leg had been nipped, MacCready poured on more speed, swearing as the bullet wound in his leg burned and stung. He reached the top of the hill and saw Desmond running down towards a building.

It had been a two story home, but the first floor walls had been eliminated and the interior gutted except for a wrecked flight of stairs. It looked like a generator was hooked up outside on the second floor patio, but MacCready wasn't interested in the finer points of its architecture. Following Desmond's lead, he ran down the hill, his long legs giving him a speed advantage over the eight-legged creatures behind him.

Desmond slowed the closer he got to the building and MacCready saw why. A moat, three feet across, had been dug around the building. An acidic, noxious smell hit MacCready's nose as he saw the trench was filled with some kind of yellow-green liquid.

"Acid," Desmond said, stopping in front of the moat. "Step in that shit and kiss your feet goodbye." Desmond jumped over before MacCready could reply. He gave himself a running start and nearly missed, but hit the dirt on the other side at Desmond's feet, who didn't offer to help him up. Instead, the ghoul went to the stairs. "Move. That gopher moat won't hold them forever."

Scrambling to his feet, MacCready waited at the bottom of the stairs as Desmond went up and rattled a door handle. "Who's there?" came a thin, reedy voice from inside.

"Open the fucking door," Desmond said.

The radscorpions had stopped at the moat. They sensed the liquid within wasn't something they wanted contact with, but didn't back off. A few were pushed in by the mob behind them and began to bubble and dissolve once they made contact with the liquid.

"No," said the voice. "You'll disrupt the experiment."

"I'll disrupt your fucking skull," Desmond said. "One more time, and then I'm blowing the lock."

"Don't!" shouted whoever it was. "Very well, I'm opening the door."

The giant radscorpions had arrived. They shoved through the smaller creatures using their massive claws as plows, heedless to the ones they pushed into the moat, the remaining bodies of which were used as a bridge by the others.

The door opened above him and he wasted no time bounding up the stairs behind Desmond. He shut the door behind him and had no trouble seeing the home's owner in the well-lit, cluttered room.

Standing next to a table covered with beakers and boilers plates was a pale blond man wearing a filthy white coat. Whether his color was natural or caused by his latest guests, MacCready couldn't say. "G-greetings," he said. "M-my name is Dr. Lesko."

"You're name is Shut The Fuck Up," Desmond said. "Unless you want it to be Fucking Dead."

Lesko nodded and stood still. He had no weapon MacCready could see and didn't look like the type to grab for one. "I don't think the fucks can climb stairs," MacCready said, listening at the door. "We should be safe."

"Quite safe," Lesko said. "My defenses are specially designed."

"What do you mean?" Desmond asked. "Is this common?"

"Well…" Lesko looked away and twiddled his fingers. "Radscorpions are common, yes."

"They don't swarm like that," MacCready said, looking closer at Lesko's table. "What are you, a fucking mad scientist?"

"I'm not mad, even though you broke into my lab and lured the radscorpions here. But I am a scientist."

"You built this God damned place with the bugs in mind," Desmond said. "What do you know?"

MacCready was more curious as to why Desmond was suddenly so interested in whatever Lesko was doing and the swarm of bugs. Judging by his reactions when they were attacked, Desmond hadn't know about the swarming radscorpions prior to meeting them.

"Are you here to steal my work?" Lesko said. "If that's the case, it's not at a phase where it's useful."

"Then that makes you useless," Desmond said, raising his shotgun and pointing at Lesko's face.

"No, no!" Lesko shouted, ducking and putting his hands up. "That's a lie, I lied! It's useful."

"That's more like it. Start talking. What's going on here?"

"If I tell you, will you promise not to kill me?"

"That depends on how much you annoy me," he said. "Now, spill it or I spill your guts."

MacCready knew a thing or two about being ruthless, having kept needy beggars as well as vicious raiders out of Little Lamplight with zeal and often resorting to violence to do so. He didn't know why, but he thought Lesko should do a little more than be annoying to deserve being killed.

Regardless of what he thought, he knew this was Desmond's show and if Lesko knew what was good for him, he would tell him what he wanted to hear.

**To be continued…**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five.**

Desmond's attitude trampled any reluctance Lesko had to discuss his experiments with outsiders. The wheedling little man only answered specific questions at first, but his own enthusiasm soon had him babbling about his work in detail, so much that Desmond had to nudge him back towards non-scientific generalities.

MacCready decided that he didn't care what happened to Lesko once he had the whole story. "I used to keep a lab in near Grayditch," Lesko said. "I worked with ants, you see. I was attempting to shrink them, but because of factors outside of my control, the research had to be abandoned."

Lesko was another wasteland lunatic. Finding enough to eat and keeping safe wasn't good enough for these people, they had to make trouble. MacCready remembered hearing Three Dog mention Grayditch a few times over Galaxy News Radio. Three Dog usually told things like they were, and he talked about Grayditch being overrun by giant, fire-breathing ants, all thanks to some crazy nut scientist.

"I'm afraid the scorpions aren't going well either," Lesko said. "My attempts to make them smaller have led them to work in colonies."

"Let me guess," Desmond said. "You used the same DNA from the ants when you tried to shrink them, and now the fucking radscorpions are acting like ants. Is that it?"

Lesko pushed up his glasses and nodded. "That was my theory as well."

"I have a theory," MacCready said. Both Desmond and Lesko looked over, as he hadn't spoken during Lesko's lecture. "You're an insane bug-fucker, and this is a waste of time." He felt his stomach tighten, hoping Desmond wouldn't see this as a challenge. "We need to kill the fucking things so we can leave and get to Germantown."

Desmond grinned, his blasted lips revealing a set of surprisingly well-kept teeth. "I knew there was a reason I didn't just shoot you in the back of the head," Desmond said. "You got the right attitude, but your brain is for shit. Have a little foresight, boy. If I remember conversation correctly, Germantown is supposed to be a mutant stronghold. Maybe the egghead here can be useful and get the scorpions to work for us."

MacCready fixed Lesko with a glare. He didn't think the wimpy man was worth much of anything, but didn't want to challenge Desmond's idea directly. "Well, bug-fucker? I'm guessing you can't do shit about the radscorpions, otherwise you wouldn't be stuck up her."

Lesko again pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at the floor. "That's not exactly the case," he said. "While it's true that leaving here with them out there would be a challenge, rest assured I remain here chained to the great cause of science, not my own fear."

"Shut the fuck up," MacCready said. "Tell us how we can get out of here or control the fucking bugs."

"Well, as your friend so correctly deduced, these particular radscorpions are a colony. I haven't been able to do much research on them directly, but if there are as much like ants as their behavior suggests, they should communicate through pheromones."

MacCready pulled the slide back on his pistol, ejecting a bullet and chambering another. It was a useless thing to do on an automatic, but the psychological effect was what he was after. "I don't read science books, I wipe my ass with them. What the fuck is a pheromone?"

Lesko swallowed hard. "It's like a smell. The scorpions should be able to excrete different smells in order to communicate. If you get me a sample, I may be able to extract certain smells that will make the creatures behave however you would like them."

"That's what I like to hear," Desmond said. "See, boy? An ounce of finesse can save a pound of ammunition."

"Indeed. The power of science…"

"Shut up," Desmond said, cutting Lesko off. "We've got work to do and so do you."

***

Lesko had a few stimpaks in his lab, which MacCready applied to his wounded leg, which had throbbed all through Lesko's explanation of his experiments. With the leg much better, MacCready was free to have it nearly sliced off by the pincer of one of the radscorpions that had blundered its way up the stairs. With some shooting and more cursing than was thought scientifically possible by Lesko, the two managed to get an intact radscorpion into the lab to be cut open.

It smelled faintly of almonds and made sucking noises once Lesko had cut open the carapace and began rooting around in its innards. MacCready took a spot by the window and looked out over the small sea of scorpions that had gathered. He frowned as he watched them begin to burrow between a tall rock that was set apart from the cliff that backed Lesko's lab. Desmond had noticed it too, and relayed the information to Lesko, who was up to his elbows in radscorpion guts.

"Oh dear," Lesko said. "Perhaps they've chosen a new nesting site. That would explain their aggression…but they were always aggressive, weren't they?"

"It doesn't matter," Desmond said. "Now you either get this pheromone business working, or we're all fucked."

After more squishing noises from the radscorpion, Lesko shouted "Eureka!"

MacCready and Desmond looked to see that Lesko held something the size and shape of a baseball in his hand. It had greenish ooze dripping from it along with string-like fibers that dangled bellow his elbow. "The pheromone gland. I can begin extracting what you'll need immediately. And then you'll go, right?"

"You're damn right we'll go," Desmond said. If that's a nest out there, we're not staying."

MacCready watched the scorpions out the window. They were definitely digging their way under the rock. Their numbers and huge claws made the digging go quick and they were methodical about it as well. There were always a few at the entrance, shoveling away, but they were not the same ones that had started the job. Those had gone deeper and were shoveling dirt backward to the ones behind them like a conveyer belt.

"No fucking way," MacCready said as something crested the hill. A black scorpion the size of a truck was being moved towards the burrow on the backs of a number of smaller scorpions. It looked like any other scorpion, only its back was pockmarked with holes.

"Fascinating," Lesko said, having moved up behind MacCready and Desmond. "Normally, scorpions lay eggs on their back and when the young hatch, they are protected by the mother's tail. That must be a queen…she's developed an egg sack in her back…"

"Disgusting," Desmond said. "Are you sure the pheromones will get us past that?"

Lesko cleared his throat. "I would wait until she's buried," he said and chuckled. "They might get antsy with the queen exposed."

MacCready chambered another bullet, not wanting to hear more puns. Lesko watched the radscorpion queen be brought beneath the earth before going back to work. MacCready wondered if Lesko could possibly make the creature's worse than they were, but decided they had the upper hand over him now.

Other thoughts went through MacCready's mind as he watched the radscorpions. Just what did Desmond plan to do with them when they reached Germantown? Would having radscorpions running around be dangerous to any Big Town captives? Assuming there were any, of course. It didn't matter, MacCready thought finally. Things were going to happen one way, regardless of what he wanted.

He missed being the mayor.

**To be continued…**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six.**

MacCready couldn't smell anything special about the drops of clear fluid he applied to his neck and wrists. Lesko created a number of vials of different pheromones which he taped colored pieces of paper to. MacCready and Desmond had put on the blue pheromones, which Lesko said would make the other radscorpions think they were also radscorpions and not attack.

The green label, Lesko said was one scouts used to lead raiding parties. He said to leave drops of it on the way to Germantown to lead them there. There was also a red label, which Lesko said they should be leery of using. "That triggers an attack," he said. "Jut it on what you want them to attack, all they need to do is smell it. Only one needs to sense it and that individual will let out its own attack pheromones, so it should be easy to use."

"Sounds like there's a catch," Desmond said.

"They will attack anything that isn't a scorpion," he said. "It might override the blue labeled vial and you may be in danger as well."

"We'll take out chances," Desmond said. "Lets get going, kid."

MacCready was the first one out the door. The radscorpions that had been bellow the house were trapped by the acid, which had dissolved the living bridges they used to cross. When they didn't scuttle to attack, MacCready jumped down to be with them. Wary of their stingers, he jumped over the acid ditch with no trouble this time, as did Desmond. "I want to test something," Desmond said, opening the scout vial.

"What are you doing?" MacCready said. "These ones can't follow us."

Desmond released a drop on the ground and the scorpions on the other side of the acid went towards it, heedless of the burning liquid. One made it across over the backs of its dead brothers but made no move to attack. "You'd be an easy one to kill," Desmond said. "You're far too trusting. All he would have had to do is put the attack stink in the scout stink and watch the fun from his window."

He was right, but MacCready felt brave enough to argue. "Yeah, but we stink like the nasty fuckers so they won't get us anyway."

"Maybe, maybe not," Desmond said. "I know I'm not releasing the attack signal until they have something to eat aside from me. Now, come along and try to learn something."

They went near the tunnel entrance and Desmond began dropping pheromones. As they went towards Germantown, MacCready noticed a caravan of radscorpions, big and small, following them.

"How long does this shit last?" MacCready asked.

"How the hell should I know?" Desmond said. "If they get their gall up, we'll throw on more."

It took less time to reach Germantown than MacCready thought. The town was a ruin, with the only standing structure being the police station. It was surrounded by a mesh fence shored up by sandbags and sheets of steel.

"Hold," Desmond said, looking through a pair of binoculars. "It's inhabited, alright. Those green bastards have a nice little setup."

MacCready squinted. He could see super mutants patrolling the walls outside as well as moving between tents in the yard between the building and the fence. "It looks like there's a way through the barricade, but we'll be sitting ducks if we use it. Stay here with the pheromones, I'll scout around the back."

MacCready crouched and watched Desmond leave. The radscorpions milled around him, bumping him with their sharp appendages. With their alien faces so close, MacCready suffered the worst case of the willies he'd had since Princess tried to kiss him after taking one too many sips from an old liquor bottle.

Princess. He thought of her for some reason. He wouldn't admit it out loud, but he missed fighting with her. She didn't like bugs and it was tempting to go back to Little Lamplight with the radscorpions in tow just to scare her.

He snorted. He couldn't go back. Even though his word had been law for as long as he could remember, there were some laws bigger than he was and they held that no mungos could enter Little Lamplight.

"There was that one time," he said to the radscorpions. "Fucking mungo wanted in to the vault…"

That mungo had been around entirely too much, but had earned it. Saving the captured Lamplighters from Paradise Falls and getting Sticky to Big Town. Thinking of Sticky led MacCready's thoughts back to Big Town. Wherever its people where now, it was no place to send Lamplighters. He would have to go back to tell them that much.

Hopefully Princess wouldn't shoot him.

He dropped another bit of the scout vial to keep the radscorpions in place. The sun was beginning to set and he wondered if Desmond hadn't just ditched him and snuck into station on his own.

When he was tapped on his shoulder, he nearly shrieked. "Calm the fuck down," Desmond said. "You'll need a clear head to pull this off."

"Pull what off?"

"There's an opening near the back to the door. The fucking mutants haven't walled off the entire thing. That's where we're going through, once we get our little friends here to swarm the front."

"Let me guess," MacCready said. "I'm the poor fuck who's going to sneak up there and light off the attack signal."

"Now you're catching on, boy." Desmond stood up and pointed to the south. "Once these bugs go ape shit, haul your ass over there to that stop sign. We'll go around the back while the bastards are having it out."

He handed MacCready the attack vial and ran off. "Fuck me," MacCready said, thinking about how he was going to avoid being shot. The radscorpions would follow him, but they wouldn't move too far ahead without the pheromone. He sighed and an idea struck him. Putting a drop of the scout pheromone on a rock, he threw it. Slowly, the radscorpions made their way past him, allowing him to crouch behind the large ones and toss pheromone soaked rocks in front when they stopped.

In the gloom, the super mutants didn't see the approaching army until it was close. They opened fire, spraying the scorpions with bullets. A bullet bounced off MacCready's helmet, making him fumble for the attack vial. "Fuck, here goes nothing," he said, tossing the vial at the barricade. It broke open on a jersey barrier and for a moment, nothing happened.

"Damn that bug-fucker science asshole…"

There was a surge and MacCready felt himself being pushed and trampled by sharp, alien feet. The radscorpions surged forward as if possessed, climbing the barricade after using each other as ramps. He was able to get to his feet and push his way out as bullets went past him and stingers bumped his helmet.

He was clear of the radscorpions but not the super mutant's bullets. The shots sent clumps of dirt around his feet, urging him to move faster. When he reached Desmond, he was out of breath but not bleeding. "Masterful job with the rocks," Desmond said. "Think you're a fucking genius now? Come one, before that big brain of yours gets blown out."

Not letting MacCready catch his breath, Desmond ran around to the back of the station. There was one mutant straggler near the back but its head exploded from Desmond shooting it on the run with his rifle.

The door to the station was up a makeshift ramp and was locked. Desmond shot the lock off and kicked the door open before charging inside. MacCready didn't know what he was after, but he seemed to be in a rush now. All MacCready wanted to know what had been done to the people who had been taken there and for that he didn't need to follow Desmond.

**To be continued…**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven.**

MacCready expected the interior of the police station to be dark, but the super mutants had rigged the lights to work. Desmond ran down a hallway and didn't stop to see if MacCready was behind him.

With his gun drawn, MacCready went down a flight of stairs and through a door. The stench of rotting meat hit his nose, making him gag. The room bellow had many of the interior walls knocked out, causing the ceiling to bow slightly. Garbage and broken bits of building were strewn about, but the lights were on, revealing sights that would rather have missed MacCready.

Hanging from the ceiling and resting in piles were nets tied into bags. They were stuffed with red, fleshy material spotted with slivers of white. MacCready tasted vomit in his mouth as he examined one and saw they were bags of bones, organs, and cast off meat.

Trying not to let puke spill out of his mouth, he made his way over the floor and saw that he had entered some sort of kitchen. Resting on counters were the prime cuts from human prey, along with meat from other creatures. Breathing through his mouth, MacCready made his way to the back and nearly shot something when it moved on a table.

"Help!" It was a man, an average wastelander from the look his plain, bloodspattered clothes. He had been hog tied.

MacCready held his gun up to the man's face. "I've got questions," he said. "I'll untie you, but if you fucking run, I'll do the mutant's job for them. Got it?"

"Whatever you say," the man said. His brown skin was covered in sweat and he looked fatter than the average wastelander. "Just get me out of here. Christ, they've been keeping us like fucking Brahmin. In pens, feeding us God knows what to fatten us up."

MacCready cut the ropes binding the man with a rusted butcher knife. It was dull and the cutting was slow. The man sat up, eager to run. "I'm looking for people from a place called Big Town," MacCready said. "Know anything?"

"We don't talk much in the pens," he said. "No point. You make a friend and the next day they're dinner." He looked at MacCready's gun. "One day they came in with a small herd of people, not like they usually do. They all knew each other and most had been shot up…that was a while ago I think. I've been here a long time, see. They've been feeding me the most, getting me fatter than the others…Jesus."

The man was shaking, not liking the memory of his time as a cow. "Jesus isn't here," MacCready said. "Did these people say where they were from?"

The man looked at MacCready and his eyes said everything. They were barely human eyes, the hunted look of an animal had filled them completely. "They took them away one by one," he said. "One got killed trying to stop it, and that pretty much took the fight out of the others. I only remember one of them. She was a black woman with a bright red jumpsuit." He looked around the room and pointed to a pile of refuse in the corner near a fridge. "Like that one."

MacCready looked. There was indeed a red jumpsuit lying in a pile of other clothes. A broken pair of glasses lie nearby. He had heard of a woman named Red who ran Big Town. "Fuck," MacCready said. "I fucking knew it."

"Then why did you come here?" asked the man. "Are we done? Can I go?"

"Yeah, fuck off," he said, still looking at the red jumpsuit. He didn't know if he was more pissed off than sad, or what he was feeling, but MacCready decided that he had seen what he needed to see and now needed to leave. He didn't know how well the radscorpions would fare against the super mutants once they got their bearings and there was Desmond to account for.

He ran back upstairs and saw no sign of the captive, but did see Desmond coming down the hall. "What the hell did you want with this shithole, anyway?" Desmond asked.

"What did you want with it?"

Desmond stopped in the hall, cocking his head to the side. "Fair enough. None of your God damned business, really. This is where we part company, boy. I helped you get here and you helped me, so we're even. Still, I'll leave you with some advice: You're tough and ruthless, but not enough of either. You've got to be craftier, examine every angle. And open a fucking book now and again, you might learn something."

MacCready nodded and let Desmond walk past him. "You want the stinky shit the egghead made?"

"The pheromones? Fuck no, you keep it. I don't need those creepy bastards following me all over."

Desmond opened the door and disappeared into the night. MacCready soon felt he should follow suit. With nowhere to go, he put more of the blue pheromone on himself just in case sweat had worn it off and headed back towards Lesko's lab. "Read a book," he said. "Alright, I'll read a mother fucking book."

**To be continued…**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight.**

Lesko had not been happy to see MacCready, but a gun convinced him to allow the tired former Lamplighter a bed. Lesko was also intrigued about how leading the radscorpions went, but MacCready was in no mood to talk.

In the morning, MacCready awoke to the smell of brewing, ancient instant coffee. Lesko said he rarely drank the stuff, but instead relied on the smell to stimulate him. MacCready tried a cup and it obliterated the smell and taste of the Germantown Police Station, replacing it with something slightly less foul.

"Where's your ghoul friend?" Lesko asked.

"Gone," MacCready said. "Fucker got what he needed. He gave me some advice, too."

"Oh…" Lesko said.

"I'm going to learn some shit," MacCready said. "And you're going to teach me."

Lesko sat up straight. "Oh my, um…I simply don't have the time, what with my research and all…"

"Your shit-for-brains research has done nothing fuck up some radscorpions, which were fucked up to start with. You pulled the same shit with ants in Grayditch and you didn't learn shit. You're a smart, stupid, bastard, which is the worst kind of stupid bastard," MacCready said.

"Young man, it takes many years of intense study to become an accomplished scientist like me. One simply can't expect to…"

"Shut the fuck up," MacCready interrupted. "I've got no fucking intention of becoming a dumbass scientist. I'm a fucking mayor, and that's what I'm going to be, super mutants or no super mutants."

Lesko looked perplexed. He had been boiling a pot of mush, which was now ready. As he stood up to serve it, he looked back at MacCready. "Well, I know a little bit about statecraft," he said. "It's not much, but I could…"

"Shut the fuck up," MacCready said. Lesko slopped a pile of mush on a plate and MacCready began eating it. "So your story is that you fuck with the genetics of these frigging bugs so they're not so dangerous, right?"

"That's correct," Lesko said, eating his mush and not making eye contact, or looking up.

"That hasn't panned out too fucking well, has it?" A lump of mush fell from MacCready's mouth back into his bowl. He didn't know what he was eating exactly, and didn't care. "What did seem to work pretty good was those vials you pulled out of the radscorpion's ass. They didn't give us any shit and they fucking wasted the muties."

Lesko now seemed interested. "Is that so?"

"Damn right that's fucking so." Another lump of mush. He was eating fast to avoid the taste. "A raiding party made those muties shit themselves. Think they'd attack a hive? No fucking way."

"Forgive me, Mr…"

"MacCready."

"Mr. MacCready, but I don't understand your fascination with controlling radscorpions. You seem to have an acute distaste for them."

"There's nothing cute about them," MacCready said, and explained about the relationship between Little Lamplight and Big Town. "They make Big Town out to be some great place, but even before it got wiped out, I'm pretty sure it was a shit hole. The way I see it, if everyone who lived there had some of that bug perfume and a hive was parked on the end of town with all the junk, no green skinned retard mutant would come near the fucking place."

"That sounds fine in theory," Lesko said, "but the logistics…"

"I was the fucking mayor when I was eleven," MacCready said. "You let me worry about working out the logistics."

Lesko began to chuckle, but MacCready's glare put a halt to it. "I'll get you bugs, you get me bug guts. I also need to pick your brain on how to get them to move that fat ass old queen over to where I want."

"Ah," Lesko said, perking up. "I think this may work out better than shrinking them. When life gives you lemons…"

"What the fuck is a lemon?"

"Never mind. The only problem is that there's a special pheromone that the queen releases when she decides the nest must be moved…at least that's how it works with ants. Like I told you yesterday, I haven't studied these creature's enough to know where they differ from ants and that could be key."

MacCready finished his mush in silence, leaving Lesko to think. Lesko began talking, only in short sentences. When he wasn't told to shut the fuck up, he continued in force. "To do what you are proposing would require the proper mix of pheromones. One to make the queen abandon this site and one to make her settle elsewhere. That's probably released by the scouts. Once the move is completed, a less temporary version of the pheromone you used to keep from being attacked will be necessary. Assuming you keep the colony well fed and their numbers down, the hive should stay put. Can't have them spreading across the wasteland, now can we?"

"Why do I get the feeling I'm going to have to crawl down into that fucking hole and stick my hands up that giant bug's ass," MacCready said.

"Perhaps," Lesko said. "You'll need to get me another specimen. I'll have to make more pheromones and devise some method of getting what you need from the queen without harming her. If the others have cause to think you're a danger, they will attack."

"Fucking great," MacCready said. "I'll be right back."

He stood and headed for the door, making sure to dab himself with the pheromone. By his count, he had plenty of time, should he survive, to set up Big Town's security forces before the next Lamplighter's big birthday party.

**To be continued…**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine.**

After capturing two radscorpions and helping Lesko dissect them, MacCready wondered if his plan was worthwhile. The inside of a radscorpion was a wad of goo and ooze with some hard bits that Lesko said were organs, and the smell made him want to vomit.

Lesko stopped the anatomy lesson at midday to give himself time to manufacture something he said MacCready would need. MacCready cussed, but was glad to take a break from digging in bug guts. He ate a package of noodles and some dubious looking water while keeping an eye on the radscorpion nest outside. Four large radscorpions were posted in the front, overseeing the smaller ones as they dragged in bits of corpses.

MacCready was pleased to see that most were dismembered super mutants.

"Now we can continue," Lesko said, coming out of the back room where he had been making noise with tools. In his hand, he held a tube made from a length of pipe with a smaller rubber tube on one end and a conical piece of steel on the other. The entire thing looked like a giant syringe.

"What the fuck is that?" MacCready asked. "Am I giving the god damned thing an enema?" MacCready remembered one day when Lucy, Little Lamplight's doctor, read what an enema was from a book and told everyone. One kid had laughed himself into a seizure that he nearly didn't recover from.

"No," Lesko said. "You can't cut the queen open and going in through the rear won't work. You'll need to stick this down one of the egg tubes on her back, puncture the pheromone gland, gently I might add, and extract some. Bring it back her and I can synthesize the necessary pheromones."

"Fuck," MacCready said, and finished his noodles. Something about the water made him feel queasy, and he realized that he hadn't had any cave fungus in a while, nor had he brought any with him. The stuff tasted foul, but helped Little Lamplight when the scavenging was too dangerous and Lucy said it kept their radiation levels in check. He had always wondered if radiation might be preferable to the taste of fungus and suspected he would find out before too long.

"Let's get this shit over with," MacCready said, putting a few drops of pheromone on his neck and wrists and taking the syringe from Lesko. He also picked up a few green, plastics rods, the kind that glowed when they were hit hard enough. MacCready remembered when a crate of them had been found and brought into Little Lamplight. The caves had glowed more than usual and then even more when the Lamplighters found they could break them open and the glowing goo inside could be spread around. A few had become ill after eating it, but aside from that it had been good times.

"If I get eaten by those fucking bugs, I'm coming back to haunt you," MacCready said, opening the door.

Lesko let a smirk cross his face briefly, but his expression quickly returned to one of deference. "I thought of one more precaution," he said.

"What? Make it fucking quick."

Lesko reached into his pocket and pulled a plastic bag filled with a greywhite powder that had been shaped into a lump. "This is a cocktail of powerful sedatives," Lesko said. "See that the queen ingests it, and you'll have an easier time extracting the pheromone."

"Fucking bugs," MacCready said, taking the substance.

***

The green glow of the chemical flares illuminated the area in directly in front of him. MacCready though of the science books he had skimmed when he had been bored and remembered the pictures of ant hills he had seen. They went strait down into chambers with the queen at the bottom.

He saw no side chambers and instead of a straight drop, the tunnel sloped gradually downward. The ceiling was made of rock, but the radscorpions had shifted the loose dirt out quite efficiently. Some were still working at it, keeping the entrance clear from the dirt and debris tracked in by the others who were busy dragging down morsels of food.

The bugs didn't mind the light, but MacCready had to watch himself as the radscorpions cared little for what their stingers bumped into. The combat armor he had grown into over the years was serving him well in that regard, the metal plates deflecting the venomous stings.

When the light stopped reflecting cave wall and petered out into gloom, he was overcome by the sense that he was now in a cavern. The floor was rock and he could hear scuttling all about him. Stumbling over dead radscorpions and other things scavenged such as super mutants and raiders, he nearly screamed like a girl when his light fell on a massive pincer.

It lie still, but shuffled now and again. Beyond it, he could hear a slurping sound. Dabbing himself with more pheromone (He had only brought one kind, not wanting to switch them in the dark) he walked past the claw and towards the slurping sound.

Her exoskeleton was black, but not as black as her eyes, four of which he could see lined up in a row over he mouth, which he thought was little more than a fleshy hole surrounded by tiny mandibles which worked to shovel food in.

The food was also something MacCready took note of. The queen had worked the lower half of a deathclaw into her mouth and appeared to be drooling on the thing. He noticed there was quite a lot of slobber involved and it seemed to him that the deathclaw was being melted and then drank rather than chewed up and eaten.

He took the sedative out of his pocket and opened it. Gripping the outside, he shifted the contents so it was inside out and he was using the bag as a glove to hold the drug. Carefully, he took a step closer and tossed the brick towards the queen's mouth. He watched it dissolve in the ooze and the queen slurped it down without noticing.

He walked slowly out from behind the queen's claws and around to her side. Her massive legs were hard and made him think of the gnarled trees that dotted the wasteland. He touched one as a test and when it didn't stir, he took a deep breath and began climbing the leg, holding the chemical flare in his teeth.

MacCready nearly fell off but succeeded in getting on to the queen's back where he made a point of catching a glimpse of her ominous stinger floating above his head. Death wouldn't come by poison, he thought, the damned thing would spear his guts clean out if it came down to attack.

Smaller radscorpions were crawling over the queen's back, pulling white football sized eggs from the holes that pockmarked it. MacCready thought his only break was that the hole he wanted was back closer to the base of the tail where the sting might not be able to reach.

He waited for a radscorpion to take an egg out before he reached into the hole himself, keeping the flare in his teeth. He reached downward with his arm, trying to focus on how disgusting it was rather than what would happen if his intrusion annoyed her. He hoped the drug had taken effect.

He touched the hard lump he was looking for, having to reach deep enough to put a pinch in his should muscle beneath his armpit and press his face to the hard surface of the queen. Muttering quietly, he took the syringe and guided it to where it was going. Praying to whatever gods there were, he stabbed the gland with the tip of the makeshift needle.

He felt the giant bug stir and his heart stop. Panicked, he drew on the syringe, sucking up as much of whatever was in it as he could before pulling the device out. The radscorpions were moving quickly now and the queen was rocking. He slid off her side and was being bumped by the smaller bugs.

Knowing he wasn't going to succeed in making a dash for it, he took out the pheromone vial and dumped the contents on his face, rubbing it all over. The radscorpions still crowded him, unsure about stinging. When one took a stab at his shoulder, that was it. The end.

He thought of Little Lamplight and the glow stick fight. As pincers and stingers came for him, he took the chemical flare in one hand and a knife in another. Slitting it open like a raider's wrist as it reached over a makeshift ladder, he cut the flare and flung it at one of the large scorpions. It splattered over the beast, lighting the area around it, leaving MacCready in the dark.

He knew they could still see him, but now someone else was the shining one, not him. They both smelled the same, so the others moved to attack the glowing radscorpion. If it was confused as to why it was suddenly being attacked and killed, it didn't show it. MacCready wasted no time heading in the direction of the exit. He tripped and fell on the sea of bodies coming towards the inner chamber, but scrambled back up.

MacCready ran faster when he saw daylight. With his lungs about to burst, he ran back to Lesko's lab.

**To be continued…**


	10. Chapter 10

**Part Two: Wasteland Princess**

**Chapter Ten.**

Princess cracked her knuckles as she stood at the top of the hill overlooking Big Town. "Bug Town is more like it," she said to herself as she adjusted a necklace that had been given to her half an hour earlier by a girl that had left Little Lamplight before her. It was a piece of old sponge that had been soaked in something. The girl had said to wear it at all times while around Big Town if she wanted to live.

Princess had put a bullet in MacCready when he had returned to Little Lamplight not long after he had left. Shooting him had made her more unpopular, but her only regret was that she hadn't shot him in the face. He had been shouting about Big Town being destroyed, which was the only thing that had saved him from her second bullet which went wide as she was wrestled to the ground by Lucy.

He had looked cute while on the cave floor, bleeding.

She was the only one who didn't believe his story about Big Town. The longer he talked, the more the others nodded and the less she believed. First, she was expected to think that the best town in the wasteland had been overrun by stupid muties. Second, she was supposed believe that MacCready, the fucking coward who was only brave when sniping people from the wall and punching girls, had gone into a radscorpion nest and taken it over with the help of a mad scientist.

And to top it all off, Big Town was now Bug Town and was protected by radscorpions that would kill you if you didn't smell right. "Bullshit," she said, slamming her fist into the other.

The first thing she planned to do was kick MacCready's ass and feed him to his damned bugs. He had sucker punched her once when they were little, but she wasn't little anymore. She had killed enough mutants and raiders since then to consider herself a badass. She still wore her pink dress but had cut it into a skirt which she wore over leather pants. Complete with a top adorned with metal plates she had picked of a slaver, Princess thought she looked the part of a true wasteland princess.

"He can go be mayor of the fucking bugs," she said, walking down the hill and around the barricades at Big Town's entrance. There was a wooden footbridge there, made wide for radscorpion traffic. As she entered the town square, she saw that her coming had been anticipated.

No one was out on the street. Some had come to stand on porches while others watched from windows. Princess sneered at a few of them, having marked them as wastelanders and not former Lamplighters. MacCready had let the place go to hell.

He was standing in the center of town with his arms crossed. He was still wearing that dopey looking military armor minus the helmet. His poofy red hair shifted in the wind and dust hid many his freckles. She wanted to pinch his cheeks almost as bad as she wanted to hit him.

"Welcome to Big Town," he said. "I'm the Mayor, R.J. MacCready."

"I know who you are, asshole," she said.

"Glad you remember, bitch," MacCready said. "I was thinking I was going to have to remind you, but I guess you're smarter than you look."

Her fists clenched. She liked being the Princess of Little Lamplight and didn't like the idea of being a princess living under a mayor in some stupid bug town. "Who elected you?" she asked.

"The citizens," MacCready said. "ALL of them." A radscorpion trundled past MacCready on its way out. Princess gave it a dirty look, of which it took no notice.

She swallowed. He really had found some way to control the radscorpions. Frowning, she thought it was more likely that the radscorpions had killed the former inhabitants and MacCready had simply come up with some sneaky way to trick them.

"I want a recount," she said. "I've got five votes." She held her palm up and curled it into a fist.

"Here's the ballot box, bitch," MacCready said, holding his arms out wide.

She screamed, startling the humans and radscorpions alike and charged with her fist in the air. MacCready stepped to the side and kicked at her ankle, sending her feet into the air and her face into the ground. She picked herself up to the sound of clapping and bit down on her lip hard enough to make it bleed before running at MacCready again.

This time, he didn't sidestep her. Moving slowly towards her, he ducked beneath her fist and sent his own into her nose. She was transported back to when she was ten, the first time his fist had connected with her face, and lost consciousness.

***

Princess gave the peeling wall of Big Town's hospital a blank stare as Lucy fixed a bandage onto her nose. "It should heal straight, I think," Lucy said.

Princess shrugged.

"Look on the bright side," Lucy said, finishing the bandage off. "The fight lasted a little longer this time…and the bugs really are a help. Just keep out of their way and try not to get on nest detail."

"Nest detail?"

Lucy nodded. "Yeah. MacCready has people go into the nest to scavenge the bodies the radscorpions bring in. It's mostly slavers, raiders, and muties. When we start seeing wastelanders, MacCready makes a big deal of selling pheromone to surrounding settlements. The radscorpions are actually really helpful, if a little creepy."

Princess gritted her teeth. Her nose hurt, which was her only distraction from the humiliation she felt. "Looks like the ass really has everything covered," she said, not unclenching her teeth.

"Yeah…," Lucy said. "Only…sometimes we have to find food for the radscorpions if we notice they're not bringing much in, otherwise MacCready says they'll leave."

"Sounds like fun," Princess said. "Is there a detail for popping slavers and mutants?"

"Yes," Lucy said. "There's also a new thing you should know about. It's a law the mayor passed while you were unconscious."

Princess rolled her eyes. "What is it?"

"He, uh, said to make feeding the radscorpions easier, anyone convicted of treason would be fed to them." Lucy patted her arm to comfort her. "I think he said you were a grandfather or something like that, so don't worry. But from now on…"

"Does leaving count as treason?" Princess asked.

"I don't know," Lucy said. "I think that's banishment, but why would you want to…"

"Because I can't stand him!" Princess shrieked. "I tried to be nice to him a long time ago…I-I…" her voice shrank. "I liked him. I actually liked him and he…he…"

She felt tears well up behind her eyes but bit her lip again. Clenching her fists, she pounded the table. "I'll kill him. I'll leave forever and come back and kill him."

She stood up. "Can I have a stimpak?"

Lucy looked away. "I don't know…you're not going to die from your nose and they're hard to find. I also just spent a long time bandaging you."

"I'll never ask you for anything again, _Lucy,_" Princess said, spitting the other girl's name. "I promise."

Lucy though that promise sounded more like a threat and so she quickly got a stimpak from the first aid box. Princess held still while the needle went into the area around her nose. Lucy didn't know what was in a stimpak that made it work like magic, but thought she would be the best doctor in the waste if she ever found out.

Princess ripped the bandage off her nose as the swelling went down before Lucy's eyes. Princess stormed out the door, heading for where Big Town kept its stock of weapons which it now used mostly for trade with the radscorpions working defense.

Lucy followed her out and held her breath when she saw MacCready head Princess off.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" he asked. "There's a new law in town, you know."

"I heard, which is why I'm leaving. I'm taking some guns and I'm leaving forever. Don't try to stop me, or you won't get lucky a third time."

MacCready smirked and looked like he might try his luck for a third time. Instead, he backed away and gestured with both hands towards the armory as though Princess were actual royalty. "Be my guest, your majesty. If it'll get you the fuck out of here, take the who fucking building if you want."

"Maybe I will," she said, going into the armory and slamming the door.

She left Big Town carrying an assault rifle, two 10mm semiautomatic pistols, ammunition bandoliers and a few grenades. She thought about shooting MacCready dead, but had better, more satisfying plans for his demise. She liked to think her time as a princess had taught her the value of planning and patience. She hoped the people who had been the dinner of Bug Town's radscorpions thought so as well.

**To be continued…**


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven.**

Princess felt good, thinking about how it would be to come back to Big Town, Bug Town, as she now thought of it, with an army at her back.

Raiders and super mutants couldn't possibly care much for being eaten by radscorpions and would be eager to follow anyone who promised them a way to victory and spoils. Thinking about a little more, she wasn't so sure she liked former Lamplighters anyway.

She had been certain to take a spare pheromone necklace with her when she left, being unsure of how long they lasted. Princess stopped feeling so good as it grew darker and her stomach began to grumble. She hadn't eaten since leaving Little Lamplight and hadn't thought to carry away anything from Bug Town but weapons, ammo, and a bug necklace.

Princess circled around Bug Town and head west, towards Little Lamplight. She had no intention of trying to return, even if it would only be to warn everyone what an awful mess MacCready had made of Big Town. Let them find out on their own time, soon enough she would be in charge again.

Her true destination was the area south of Little Lamplight. It was barren except for an unusual amount of yao guai that roamed the rocky terrain east of a ruined section of highway. Somewhere in that area was a place called Evergreen Mills. This she knew from Lamplighters who had gone scouting just a tad too far for comfort and had come back smaller in number and with a few more holes than they had prior to leaving.

Princess had a theory about scouting parties. If they came back with food, great. If they didn't come back at all, less mouths to feed.

One such trip had lead to the discovery of Evergreen Mills. It was like Paradise Falls, only smaller. A second scouting party, a secret one, directed by Princess, discovered that it was a gathering spot for raiders who traded amongst each other and sometimes sold slaves to Paradise Falls.

Princess figured she could pass for a raider. She had the dress, the attitude, and the firepower. All she had to do was get in good with the raiders in Evergreen Mills and she would convince them to launch an attack on Bug Town. All they had to do was steal some of the pheromone necklaces and they were in business.

Getting to Bug Town had taken the better part of the day. Her walk around and back towards Little Lamplight took up another good potion of it, leaving her not far from Bug Town when the sun was almost down over the horizon. Being a gate guard, she wasn't used to so much walking.

Princess walked up a hill and stood at the base of a broken radio tower. Her plan was to sleep there and find something to eat in the morning, as walking around at night was more dangerous than in daylight. She spied a nook in the twisted steel, and began to climb, hoping to pass the night above ground where she wouldn't be tempting prey for mole rats or yao guai.

The nook was more uncomfortable than it had looked, and Princess thought she was in for a long night when she spied something in the distance on the other side of a flat area skirted by the road. It was a small campfire. She watched it for a while to see if any bodies would silhouette themselves in front of the light, but none did.

Licking her lips, she jumped down from her perch and headed towards the fire. If it was a band of raiders, then she would join them. Anyone else, and she would be having some of their food. She kept her rifle slung over her back, but kept her hands ready to pull either of her pistols.

She drew closer and caught the sight of brown Brahmin skin stretched over ribs. The animal's two heads hung lazily as it chewed on something. Princess, seeing no one around the flames, walked inside the circle of light and wondered where the camper had gone to.

Probably off taking a piss, she thought. A pile of boxes and canvass bags sat next to the brahmin, signifying that this was the camp of one of the caravan traders who wandered the wasteland. Normally, they traveled with a guard, either a mercenary or a robot. Princess saw neither and reasoned that either both were off taking a piss at the same time, or this particular trader had lost his robot.

She drew her pistol, sat down on a rock, and waited. The fire was next to a boulder, which she guessed that the brahmin's owner had gone behind to do his business. She kept an eye on the spot where he would likely return from, and swore when she felt cold steel pressed against the back of her head.

"Enjoying the fire?" said a male voice. "Set that pistol down there, right nice like that, and step over there."

She set the pistol down and suffered the indignity of having her rifle taken off her back and her other pistol plucked from her holster. The man took her grenades, too. The barrel of his gun tapped her in the back, signaling her to stand and walk. "Turn around so I can see you," the voice said.

She turned. Standing before her with a double barreled shotgun leveled at her stomach was a balding man in a suit. The fire reflected in his glasses, making it look as though the inside of his skull was on fire. "Well, are you going to shoot?" Princess asked. She couldn't believe that she hadn't been out of Little Lamplight for two days and already she was meat.

"Not unless you force me," the man said. "I'm Doc Hoff. I sell medical supplies, medical equipment, and food when I get extra."

Princess raised an eyebrow. She was his prisoner and here he was making a sales pitch. "That's great," she said. "They call me Princess."

"An interesting moniker," Hoff said. "How did you acquire it?"

A familiar meanness crawled up her torso like vines and spread across her face. "None of your God damned business, asshole," she said. "What the hell do you want from me? You caught me, great. I ain't stripping for you."

Doc Hoff's mouth flattened into a terse frown. "My dear, I would never dream of stooping to such debauchery. I do have a request, however, that will require cooperation freely given beyond the point of a gun barrel."

"I'm listening," Princess said, nearly certain that this would turn sexual at some point. Boys were all the same, regardless of age. Most of them, anyway.

"As you've no doubt noticed, it's just Betty and me here at this camp. Normally, I travel with a hired gun for protection, as there are many in the waste who would take advantage of an honest merchant for his caps and his wares," he said, letting his words hang in the air. "You seem like the gun totting type, as well as the type in need of caps. I'll cut to the chase. I'll pay you caps in exchange for some guard work."

She sucked in her lower lip, wondering what to make of Doc Hoff's offer. "I'm a raider," she said. "What makes you think I won't shoot you once I get my guns back?"

Doc Hoff chuckled. "My dear, if you're a raider, then I'm a real physician. I won't pretend to know everything about you, but that thing around your neck says you've been to Bug Town, and by your age, I'm guessing you're not long out of Little Lamplight. I'm guessing the company radscorpions didn't suit your tastes?"

Princess felt her face redden. Here was a simple caravan merchant who had not only gotten the drop on her all to easily, but had figured out half of her life story just by looking at her. Was she so obvious, or had she just underestimated caravan merchants?

"I hate bugs," she said. "And I hate mayors. What if I say no?"

Doc Hoff pushed his glasses up and didn't smile. "Truthfully, I don't know. I don't think you'll like it. You were tying to get the jump on me, which makes you untrustworthy. If no is your final answer, then say as much and I will do what needs be done. Say yes, and we can talk caps."

Saying yes would get her guns back, so that's what she said. They settled on a price for her service, and Doc Hoff took a seat, letting Princess pick up her weapons.

"Are you hungry?" he asked.

She was, and watched him take a few cans of dog food out of a pack and heat it up in a pot. The smell made her stomach roil and churn, and she did her best not to drool. Doc Hoff stirred the pot every so often with a wooden spoon, leaving his shotgun unattended.

She could kill him at any time. All she had to do was draw a pistol and shoot. Doc Hoff's brains would be splattered over the rocks and she could help herself to his stock. She imagined herself doing it. She could see it in her mind, could feel the weight of the gun, the force of the recoil, the crack of firing pin hitting the bullet's primer. She had shot people before. People who had done less to her than Doc Hoff.

He grabbed some small bowls from another bag and filled them, supplying her with a steel spoon. The food tasted like it smelled, delicious, and she ate fast enough to make her stomach hurt.

"What made you walk this way?" Doc Hoff said. "All of the major settlements are in the other directions. There's nothing out here but yao guai and deathclaws."

She still ate, even though her stomach hurt. She wondered if she should bother telling him why she had come west. "I have my reasons," she said, thinking that if she was going to be following him, it would be helpful if he was headed where she wanted to go. "I'm going to Evergreen Mills. There's some people I need to see."

Doc Hoff's eyebrow raised above his spectacles. "You want to join the raiders," he said.

"You got a problem with that?"

"I don't," he said. "It seems fortuitous, however. I intend to head in that direction, but not that far."

"Really," she said. "You said before that there's nothing out here but yao guai and deathclaws, so where are you going?"

"A place called Girdershade," he said. "I have a customer out there who buys a certain rare product. I've come across some of that product, and the price she pays makes the trip worth it."

Princess had finished her dog food and was scooping up the gravy with her spoon. They sat in silence before another question entered her mind. "What happened to your first guard?"

"I caught him stealing from my stock," Doc Hoff said. "I couldn't abide that." He had finished his dinner and set his pot down. "I'll take the first watch. Girdershade isn't far north from Evergreen Mills. I'll appreciate your work until you decide to leave."

"Whatever," Princess said, and found a good spot to sleep.

**To be continued…**


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve.**

She never shot Doc Hoff, and while trying to figure out why she hadn't, she nearly didn't see the yao guai until it was too late.

It was Doc Hoff's brahmin who brought her out of her self examination. The left head snorted and swung into the right as if trying to escape. Princess looked and saw the animal bounding down a hill. It was amazingly quiet for something so large. It's long limbs, tinged black and green, barely touched the ground as it came within pouncing distance.

She had been carrying her rifle with the safety off, thinking about shooting Doc Hoff in the back. Having the gun ready had bought her the split second she needed to point and hold the trigger down. The bullets struck the yao guai in the chest and the recoil lifted the gun barrel upward at the creature's skull.

The beast died in midair, but its powerful legs had propelled it through the air hard enough for death not to be a factor in slowing it down. It hit Princess high in the chest and sent her backward, grazing off the brahmin's rear. She landed flat on her back with five hundred pounds of mutant bear sprawled on top of her.

Her gun was being pressed into her chest, making it hard to breath.

"Oh my," said Doc Hoff. "That was a close one."

"Get…off…" Princess said, trying to suck in air through her cramped lungs.

"Hang on," Doc Hoff said. "I've got just the thing."

He went to his brahmin, which now seemed calm, despite its close call with the yao guai, and came back with a rope, which he tied around the yao guai's hind legs. The other end he tied to his brahmin, which he then gave a hard slap on the rear. The dead weight was dragged off Princess, pulling at her shirt.

As she lay on the ground, wheezing, Doc Hoff drew a long combat knife and sliced into the monster's stomach. When Princess was able to stand, Doc Hoff spoke. "Be a dear and get the white package in the box on the left," he said. "Yao Guai meat that wasn't plucked off a three day old corpse sells for good caps."

She supposed he was right, and helped Doc Hoff butcher as much of the animal as they could. "That should do it," he said, once the dead mutant was little more than a shell of its former, horrific looking self. The white container had housed a preservative, making the meat they cut off into a kind of jerky.

"How much farther to this town you're looking for?" she asked.

Doc Hoff pointed towards a horizontal line held above the horizon by concrete pillars. "That highway," he said. "We reach that and follow it south. Girdershade is beneath it."

The old highways were strange objects. Sometimes they led somewhere, other times they didn't. Like buildings, they were often used as camp sites. If a gang of raiders could manage to scale a section of highway, they'd have an easily defendable spot that gave them a clear view of the surrounding area. Princess wondered if there would be any such camps on the way to Girdershade.

As they moved agonizingly slow over dirt paths that wound through sharp piles of rock and broken metal hulks, Princess kept an eye out for yao guai and paid attention to the brahmin's moods. The creature wasn't half as stupid as she had initially thought, although when one head senses danger, that didn't necessarily mean that the other was concerned, at least until it noticed what the other had seen, heard, or smelled.

As a result, Princess could generally tell which direction to watch based on which brahmin head was more annoyed. Soon she was spotting yao guai before they spotted the brahmin, and she and Doc Hoff would stop moving until the animal wandered off.

She shot one more before reaching the highway. Its leg had been broken, and she had been able to shoot it in the head without using too many bullets.

"I say, you're not half bad with that firearm," Doc Hoff said after they had butchered the second yao guai. "Maybe there's some raider in you yet, although I hope you opt for another career path."

Princess snorted at his comments. She didn't want to be a raider, that was only the first step. She was going to be the Princess of Big Town, not some low-life bandit. Scratch that, she thought, she would declare herself the Queen of Big Town once she took it over from MacCready and his stupid bugs.

Once under the highway, which offered some shade if not better walking terrain, she wondered if the name Queen suited her better. She tried it under her breath. "Hello, Queen," she said. "Hi, my name is Queen. High, my name is Princess."

"What's that?" Doc Hoff said.

"Nothing," Princess said. "I'm thinking."

"About what, if you don't mind my asking. I dabble in psychology, and it's my semi-professional opinion that something is troubling you," he said, angling his head backward as he walked in front of her, before the brahmin.

"None of your business," she said. "Everyone's got troubles anyway, so what the hell does it matter?"

"Too true, too true," Doc Hoff said. "Still, not many wastelanders have to go through what Little Lamplighters experience. I understand that you're cast out into the harsh waste once you reach a certain age, is that correct?"

Princess huffed. It seemed as though once they became mungos, the former Lamplighters hadn't kept their mouths shut too well. It explained why there was always a steady stream of mungos and freeloaders to shoot at the front gate. If this supposed doctor knew about Little Lamplight law, then chances were it was no secret anywhere else.

"Maybe," she said.

Doc Hoff's head tilted in a nod. "It's common for children to grow up and leave home, but from the stories I hear, the banishment you go through is nothing short of brutal. Is it true that you were ritualistically beaten on your way out? Had to pass a gauntlet of some kind?"

Instead of the normal screaming rage that often plagued her in her youth, Princess felt a sinking sense of irritation. "No," she said. "We give the mungo a party hat and throw a party, then they leave. They get shot if they come back."

"I see," Doc Hoff said. "So it's not violent per se, but it's definitely a banishing. Horrible."

"Why is it horrible?" Princess asked.

"I'm sure you know, dear," he said. "But perhaps you've repressed it. You don't miss your old home? Your old friends? The safety, the comfort?"

She hadn't thought about it. Her mind had been so set on seeing what had become of Big Town once MacCready had taken it over she hadn't thought about Little Lamplight. She clutched her assault rifle, ashamed and enraged at the sudden urge to cry. She thought about shooting Doc Hoff for making her do it, but decided not to.

"I'm sorry if I've upset you," he said. "Here, take this." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bottle which he removed the cap from with some difficulty. He handed Princess and small, blue pill. "Take it, you'll feel better."

She popped the pill into her mouth and chewed it up. Realizing that it tasted foul, she swallowed it as completely and as quickly as she could. "Disgusting," she said. "What the hell was it?"

"Wait and see," Doc Hoff said. "Don't be afraid to let out your feelings."

Roughly three hours later, Princess walked calmly behind the brahmin, keeping an eye out for yao guai. The little critters were getting farther and fewer between, but every now and again one popped up to say hello. Princess found their determination admirable, and thought they might be cute if they had more hair. She liked things with hair. Red hair, and freckles.

She didn't remember when the drug kicked in exactly, but did seem to recall sobbing while sitting next to a brahmin, choking out words about how someone didn't love her and all they loved was bugs. She hated bugs and she hated not being the boss. She had spent her life as a boss, of the back gate at least, but her time as the big boss, a real Princess, had been so short. Too short.

She wasn't sure what else she said, and didn't care. The second phase of the drug made everything delightful. What it didn't make nice, it made tolerable. Her aching legs and feet, Doc Hoff's questions, a hostile bot fly, all were tolerable.

"And here we are," Doc Hoff said, stopping at the top of a hill that sloped down under the highway by a pillar. There was a small shack halfway down, and what looked like a second farther along, closer to the pillar that supported the ancient road above. "Welcome to Girdershade."

Princess looked up at the highway. It formed a ceiling of concrete and steel. She could see the rusted girders under the concrete slabs, like the rib bones of a dead dog. It looked dangerous, but the shade was nice.

"Girdershade," she said. "Ha, now I get it."

**To be continued…**


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen.**

They made their way to the center of Girdershade, which seemed to consist of the two shacks Princess had already seen. She had expected people to come out of rows of houses to trade, but she supposed that it didn't take many houses to qualify as a town in the wasteland.

Doc Hoff had given her something to drink out of an old Nuka Cola bottle. It was orange, but didn't taste like the orange flavored cough drops commonly found inside old cars. Once she finished it, she slowly began to feel like her old self again.

"What the hell was that pill you gave me?" she asked.

"Not now, dear," he said, calling his brahmin to a stop in front of the lower shack. "Something's not right."

"When is anything ever right," Princess said, blowing a lock of hair from her eye.

"Hello," Doc Hoff called out. "Is anyone home?"

Princess' attention had been on their surroundings. The shacks were enclosed to some extent, with an old wire fence filling gaps between large boulders. When her attention focused on the shack, she saw that it was painted with the same picture as was on Nuka Cola bottles. The ground outside was littered with glass empties and broken pieces of what looked like toys and other objects, which were also stamped with the Nuka Cola label.

Her thoughts immediately turned to Zip, one of the most annoying Little Lamplighters that had ever lived. Addicted to Nuka Cola, he ran around the caves dressed in some sort of rat suit and a mole hat. With the shades he always wore, he had reminded Princess of a mole, or some form of rodent.

Zip's saving grace had been his scavenging abilities. Like magic, he could find something useful in an old building or car that had been stripped clean for years. Most of it had been run of the mill items, but if you came across a Nuka Cola, you could trade it to him for something good.

When the door to the Nuka shack cracked open, she expected Zip to stick his head out and begin spurting three-hundred words a minute. That wasn't possible, he was back at Little Lamplight, she thought.

What did come out was a revolver. Princess raised her assault rifle and was ready to puncture whoever was on the other side of the door when Doc Hoff raised his hand to stop her. "Sierra?" he said. "It's Doc Hoff."

The revolver lowered and the door opened. A blond woman dressed in a brown hooded coat and tan pants that only came down to her knees stood in the doorway. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face was sunken. She brightened once she got a look at Doc Hoff and Princess lowered her rifle.

The woman rubbed at one of her eyes while forcing a smile. "Hey there," she said, her voice sounding younger than she looked. "I guess you've got something for me."

"That I do, my dear, that I do," Doc Hoff said, taking a box off the brahmin. "Six bottles. Moira Brown had them. Said she had completed her research and had some left over, plus she had to finance her latest project."

Sierra didn't seem at all interested in what Doc Hoff was saying. She cradled the box like it was an infant and opened the top. Princess caught a peek at what was inside. Something blue, with a slight glow. She thought a moment and twisted her face. It was a Nuka Cola Quantum. She had tasted one on a dare and her pee had glowed for a week.

"Oh thank you," Sierra said. "Like, I needed this, you have no idea."

"That's forty caps apiece," Doc Hoff said. "Business is business, I'm sorry to say."

"Yes, of course," Sierra said. "I wasn't expecting you. Let me get my caps."

Doc Hoff took the box from her, somewhat rudely, Princess thought. Sierra looked hurt for a second, but after another forced smile, ran back into her house. Princess heard rummaging and mild cursing.

Doc Hoff looked at Princess and frowned. "She's addicted, poor woman," he said. "Can't trust a junkie, first rule of the pharmaceutical business." He patted the side of the box gently.

Princess smirked. Like everyone else in the wasteland, Doc Hoff was all about the bottom line, despite the act he put on. Maybe the last thing the junkie needed was a fix, but he'd sell to her anyway. Hoff's entire business was probably based around addicts, she thought.

Sierra came back out with a small sack of caps, which she traded to Doc Hoff for the crate of Quantum, which she clutched in her arms like an infant. "Thank you," she said. "It's been a while."

Doc Hoff looked towards another shack at the top of the hill. "Where's Ronald? He's usually good for a dose of Jet or Psycho."

Sierra sniffled and clutched her Quantum crate tighter. "I haven't seen him since he left," she said. "He said something about heading south because he wasn't getting something here. I don't know what he meant."

She looked about to cry, but seemed bolstered by her load of Quantum. Doc Hoff cast his eyes upward briefly and winked shrugged at Princess. "We're headed south," Doc Hoff said. "If we see Ronald, we'll let him know you miss him."

Sierra nodded. "Thank you. It doesn't seem as safe around here with him gone. Yesterday…"

"It was good seeing you, Sierra," Doc Hoff said. "But I'm afraid that duty calls and we must be off."

Sierra nodded and forced a smile. She gave Princess a polite nod, which wasn't returned, and went back to her shack. Doc Hoff lead his brahmin back up the hill and through a narrow dirt trail that wound through the rocks to the south. "I must say, I'm glad that Ronald Laren finally decided that he was barking up the wrong tree," Doc Hoff said.

"What?" Princess said. "I have no idea who you're talking about."

"The man that lived in the shack on the hill," Doc Hoff said. "He seemed like an ex-raider, or possibly a part-time mercenary. He had designs on Sierra, but I don't think she had a clue. I was afraid he'd try something violent after a while, but I guess he wasn't the type."

Princess shrugged, and kept her eyes and ears out for yao guai. After a while, they came across a small group of botflies that had surrounded a Robobrain. The machine had been deactivated and the glass dome over the brain was broken, allowing the botflies' maggots to infest it. Princess shot the flies before they got close enough to spit their larvae, and Doc Hoff cut the edible parts from them.

"We'll be as close to Evergreen Mills as I'm willing to get by tomorrow," Doc Hoff said. "That might be where we part company, depending on how you feel about body guard work."

"It's boring," she said. "Tomorrow, find someone else."

"Suit yourself," Doc Hoff said, and tightened a strap on the brahmin's pack as made its way over some lose gravel.

**To be continued…**


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen.**

The sun had barely risen above the horizon before they saw the smoke, an uncommon sight in the wasteland, as there wasn't much left to burn. "I think that's the mills," Doc Hoff said. "I wonder why it's on fire."

Frowning, Princess stamped her foot. A raider war was not a great time to join a gang, at least she didn't think it was. Perhaps after the fight was over and everyone was weakest, she could take over. "I guess I'll find out," she said. "Maybe this will work out for me."

"And me as well," Doc Hoff said, following Princess who had begin bounding down a slope, careful not to slip on flattened tin cans.

"I thought you were wussing out," Princess said. "Did you grow a pair overnight?"

Doc Hoff laughed and his brahmin mooed. He led the beast down the slope and made his way slow and steady as before. "Where there's smoke, there's fire. Where there's fire, there are injuries and where there are injuries, someone has to provide medication."

"You're not afraid they'll just kill you and take your meds?" she asked.

His smile made something in her stomach churn. He had given the impression of a friendly wasteland medic, but what showed through his features was anything but helpful. "I have methods of protecting myself from raiders and the like, provided that conditions are right," he said.

He grabbed a string that under the pile of goods on the brahmin's back. "This is attached to a miniature nuclear device," he said. "Animals and robots don't respect it, and neither do raiders that shoot me before they know I have it. When I walk into a raider camp, however, I have their attention and can make the situation clear to them. They become quite businesslike once we establish mutual respect."

"Not bad," she said. "Maybe we can help each other when we get there."

Doc Hoff took the lead again, and after a few hours of hard travel, began walking along a rusted railroad that led through a gap between blasted, grey hills. Princess kept her eyes upward, fearing an ambush from above. In the shadow of the two hills, she almost didn't see the body until she had stepped on it. "Hold up," she said, kneeling down to examine the corps.

It was a bald man who was dressed in scraps of leather with metal sewn on over the vital organs. A laser had burned through the leather bits in addition to half of his head. He was facing out of the valley and Princess thought he had been fleeing when killed.

"He doesn't look too fresh," Doc Hoff said, coming over. He sniffed the air over the body. "Two days, maybe."

"Unless you've got a pill that cures dead, lets go," she said.

The track led to a train depot much of which was obscured by smoke from a burning factory building. Princess gasped as two deathclaws came out from behind rocks on either side of her.

Too afraid to shoot, she backed up and was knocked over by a third deathclaw that had been lurking in the shadow behind her. "Oh dear," Doc Hoff said, taking hold of the string.

When the deathclaws didn't rush in for the kill, Princess raised her rifle.

"Halt!" someone shouted, their voice muffled by a power armor helmet speaker. Princess looked to the train cars and saw a human figure dressed in a type of power armor she had never seen before step out and level the barrel of a flame thrower at her. "Throw down your weapons," the power armor said.

Princess dropped her weapons and noticed that the deathclaws were wearing metal things on their heads with blinking lights. More men in power armor appeared, accompanied by a man wearing a grey uniform and a black hat. He was dressed in a way that reminded Princess of pictures in old books depicting the army of the old days.

The man in the grey was clean-shaven, and clean in general, something Princess was not used to seeing. "Identify yourselves," he said.

"Fuck off," she said.

"Waste 'em," the grey man said.

She heard the flamethrower's internal workings prepare for a jet of lethal fire and then Doc Hoff's voice. "Not unless you all want to be nuked," he said, wrapping the string around his fist and holding it tight.

The man with the flamethrower held off on the trigger, while the man in the grey looked at Doc Hoff carefully. "Identify yourself, wastelander," the grey man said, slowly drawing a laser pistol.

"My name is Doc Hoff," he said. "This is my assistant and bodyguard, Princess. I'm a simple trader in medicines and pharmaceuticals. We saw the smoke and thought a battle might have taken place with a need for medical attention."

"Vultures, sir," one of the men in power armor said. Their helmets had wing-like ridges, making them look like devils or bats, Princess thought. "We should waste them. They ain't got a nuke."

"Be quiet," the grey man said. "My name is Lieutenant Brokenwell. I'm the commander of this operation."

"We'll be on our way if we're not wanted," Doc Hoff said. "But then, you'd likely just shoot us once we were far enough away."

Brokenwell seemed to ponder something for a moment, but shook his head to dismiss the thought. "Look, Doc, why don't you just let go of your little string, we'll let your pet thug pick up her gear, and you can turn around and leave. This is an Enclave operation and we don't have time to be playing games with mutants."

"Who the fuck are you calling mutant, asshole?" Princess said. "I don't know who you are, but…"

The deathclaws growled. "I'd watch my mouth, lady," Brokenwell said. "If they sense too much hostility, they'll attack and there won't be anything I can do about it."

Princess had been too afraid of the deathclaws for it to register that these people had control over them. When it did dawn on her, she was awed, deathclaws being the terrors of the wasteland to human and mutant alike.

"That's a neat trick," she said. "What are you guys, some kind of army?"

Brokenwell sneered. "Don't you mutants listen to the radio? We're the Enclave. We're America. The government. We're here to clean up the wasteland and make it habitable for real humans again."

"Neat," Princess said. "Can I join?"

Brokenwell laughed, as did the other Enclave soldiers. Even the deathclaws seemed to grunt in amusement. "No," Brokenwell said. "Only humans can join. You've been out in the wasteland too long, you're a mutant. You're lucky you and your friend weren't cooked before we bothered to ask who you were, which I'm sure was an oversight." He fixed at hard stare at one of the Enclave soldiers, who seemed to shrink in his armor.

"Fine," Princess said. "I didn't want to join your lame army anyway. The Brotherhood of Steel is way better."

The Enclave seemed to bristle and the rattle of a few laser rifles was heard. Brokenwell's mouth had twisted into a hard sneer, but suddenly softened. "Well now, we can't have people running off to join those posers, now can we? Even if they are a mutant wastelander. Tell you what, kid, you help us out with a little issue that's developed here and we'll let you and your buddy go free and clear. I'll put your résumé on file and if Colonel Autumn thinks you're up to snuff, maybe we can get you some power armor. Would you like that?"

Princess recognized his tone from the one raiders used when they showed up at the gate to Little Lamplight. "Come on down kid, we got candy and games. We won't hurt you." It was a tone that made her want to lob grenades or see how many body parts she could shoot off before the raider died. She had that power once, but here it was the enemy that had the upper hand.

With no other way out of the standoff other than being nuked, Princess nodded and slowly stood up. "Alright, what is it you need?"

**To be continued…**


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen.**

She was careful to keep Doc Hoff in sight, knowing a trap would soon be sprung. They gave her weapons back, but kept four guns and a flamethrower trained on her and Doc Hoff. Brokenwell led them down the railroad tracks, past the old cars which had been modified to form makeshift houses, and to an open spot in the yard.

She heard the hum of a generator and saw where the track split two ways through more blasted rock. Towering behind some metal poles where the tracks split was something that made her pause.

It was the largest mutant she had ever seen. Taller than Little Lamplight's front gate, it looked like the other green-skinned mutants she commonly saw only with broader shoulders and more pronounced muscles.

It seemed paralyzed behind a cage that hummed with electricity. Its face was frozen into a snarl; its yellow eyes tried to track everyone around it, glowering at them with hatred.

"We call him King Frankenstein," Brokenwell said. "He's what we came here for, but as you can see, some modifications need to be made."

Princess wondered what they could want with such a beast and then she saw one of the deathclaws with the metal crown on its head.

"You want to control it like you do the deathclaws," said Doc Hoff, finishing Princess' thought. "Not a bad ploy. Let me guess, someone has to stick one of those hats on its head and no one here wants to volunteer?"

"Someone already stepped up," Brokenwell said, patting Princess on the back. "Like your friend said, we need someone to stick a transmitter on that thing's skull so we can control it like we do the deathclaws. Do that, and you can go."

Princess tapped her foot on the ground and crossed her arms. She could see Brokenwell's smirk and imaged similar ones beneath the helmets of the other Enclave soldiers. She allowed herself a playful tap on one of her grenades, but decided that her best bet would be to extend her life for the duration of the Enclave's game and hope a solution presented itself.

"How the hell do I get up there?" she asked.

"Follow me," he said, leading her down the tracks and around a train car. Parked on a flat patch of ground was what looked like an unbroken version of the ruined cars and other vehicles that were scattered over the wasteland, only two wings stretched out from the top and were tipped with propellers. "Get in," Brokenwell said, gesturing to the opening in the vehicle's side.

"What the hell is it?" Princess asked, stepping inside. The inside was all steel with benches and strange lights.

Brokenwell walked in behind her and bid her to sit down. He thumped twice on the inner wall of the vehicle and the engine started. "Fly to the top of the cliff above the subject," he shouted, and kneeled to open a foot locker.

Princess shrieked and held into the edge of the bench as the vehicle lifted into the air. She had heard about flying machines and how they used to be everywhere in the old days. That she was sitting in one, only days after leaving Little Lamplight, was something she hadn't expected.

Brokenwell picked up a piece of metal that was fashioned into a half circle with a plastic box stuck in the middle. The box had a small, thick antennae protruding from it and several buttons. "See this?" he said, holding it up. "This is a modified version of what's stuck on the deathclaws. You're going to jump onto the thing's back, put it on his head and push this button." He pushed a yellow button on the box and a series of small, barbed spines rose up from the inside of the steel crescent. He pushed another button and they retracted. "Then his this one," he said, pushing a green button, which caused the box to light up.

"Then what?" she asked.

"The transmitter is actually much more advanced than the one on the deathclaws," Brokenwell said. "We'll be able to control the mutant's every action. I'll order the controller to have the beast set you safely on the ground once you're done."

"Alright," Princess said, thinking that she would be dashed to a pulp by the mutant once the control collar was on, if not before. If they were creative, maybe the monster would eat her.

She took the collar and stepped to the edge of the flying vehicle's open door. It was hovering a good twenty feet above the mutant and likely didn't dare to get closer. "Sometime today," Brokenwell said.

She could see that the Enclave had set up a number of tents where an old fence had been. One tent had more antennas than the others and she noticed that Doc Hoff had moved over near it. With all eyes on Princess, Doc Hoff made a number of small signals towards the tent, none of which told her anything about what he was planning to do.

Princess took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. During that instant, she thought about all of the things that had to happen just right for her to survive this and she cursed R. J. MacCready's name for good measure. It wasn't likely she would live to wipe the stupid look off his face or make him realize what he had missed.

A hard shove from Brokenwell sent her over the edge. She screamed and tried to land on the hump of the monster's back. She connected with its shoulder; the only thing that kept her from falling off was her foot catching on the leather strap that looped over the mutant's back.

The monster shrugged its large, meaty shoulders, forcing Princess to dig her nails into its thick green hide for purchase. The mutant tried to swat her, but touched the electrified fence in its efforts.

Princess felt a jolt go through her body which forced her muscles to contract and grip the creature tighter. When the current left, Princess slipped downward, clutching into the leather strap as hard as she could.

The jolt made the giant forget about her and it seemed content to stand and issue low growls like it had before. With the collar in hand, Princess rested a moment and began to climb up its back, using its leather strap clothing for handholds when possible as not to annoy it.

Once on its hump, she wiggled over to the skull and positioned the transmitter. She drew her combat knife and pushed the button to deploy the spines will holding the collar a number of inches away from the mutant at an angle. She pretended to shove the collar on and hit the button again while stabbing the mutant with the knife.

It snarled and shuffled, but had learned from its first attempt what would happen if it tried to swat her. Holding the collar in place, she pushed the button that made it transmit. "It's on," she shouted, wedging her feet beneath a leather strap that went over the mutant's back hump. She held onto the knife as well, and hoped the thing's arms were too thick to swat her where she was and that she wouldn't just be shot in the chaos that was about to occur.

She heard the fence turn off and two power armored soldiers opened the gate. The mutant lumbered out a few steps and looked around, giving the controller on the ground enough time to shout that something was wrong.

The mutant bellowed and stomped on the nearest Enclave soldier while knocking the other through one of the train cars.

Laser fire filled the air, searing the mutants skin. Princess hung on while the mutant knocked over tents and train cars. The knife bit deep into the monster's back and her foot was twisting in the strap she hat it caught in. The spines on the collar were still out, and she used them to dig into the beast's skin for more of a grip.

She screamed when a searing heat poured over her back, nearly making her lose her grip. She had been shot by a laser from the flying machine and expected the next one to kill her with no leather in the way to protect her back.

The mutant had other plans. It braced its legs and squatted to pick up one of the train cars, which it hurled at the flying machine. The pilot tried to avoid it, but the collision happened anyway, nearly deafening Princess with the sound of metal slamming into metal. The flying vehicle veered over the edge of the cliff and appeared to dip down at a high rate of speed. She didn't notice an explosion, as her foot now felt like it was on fire from a laser blast.

The mutant rampaged, absorbing enough punishment from the Enclave to wipe out a small settlement. She couldn't see what was happening, but judging from the increase in shouts and crunching sounds and the decrease in laser blasts, the mutant was winning. That was a problem, she thought through the pain in her back and foot, as the animal wasn't on her side.

At least not yet, she thought, seeing Doc Hoff scrambling behind an overturned train car holding a large square object with a long antennae.

Gritting her teeth, she pushed the button on the collar that retracted the spines and held it against the mutant's skull before pushing the deploy button. The transmitter was already on, and her strength had left her. She fell hoping she landed on something soft and instead came crashing down on a pile of rocks.

Princess saw a flash of white and then darkness.

**To be continued…**


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen.**

Princess woke up and everything was dark. It was nighttime and she was on a mattress inside a train car. A light came on next to her and she saw Doc Hoff's furrowed eyebrows before she closed her eyes again.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

Her back was sore, her head felt like the mutant had stepped on it, and her foot was stiff. "Shitty," she said. "What happened, did we win?"

"Stunningly," Doc Hoff said. "You nearly died, I'm afraid, but there were enough stimpaks from the Enclave's medical tent for me to spare them on you. Without them, I don't think you would have made out so well."

"Shit, the mutant," she said, sitting up. Her head spun and Doc Hoff urged her to lie down.

"It's outside, standing still like I told it to. It's controlled by this remote, which I must admit takes some getting used to."

"We have it under control!" she said, sitting back up and nearly passing out. When Doc Hoff had calmed her, he explained how he figured the only way either of them would live was if something went awry with the Enclave's plan. He was glad she had caught on, and that the mutant had eliminated their enemies for them.

"To a degree," he said. "Whatever they were working on hadn't been perfected. The remote can guide the creature or keep it still, but using it for anything other than a wreaking machine seems quite futile."

Smiling, she thought about how she would use it to march back to Bug Town, stomp MacCready's bugs and declare herself its queen. Some work would have to be done, of course. Rounding up a gang of raiders, having them build a place to sit and shoot on the creature's back, and maybe some leg armor for good measure were all on her revised to-do list. "Not a problem," she said. "If that's all it's good for, then that's all I'll use it for. How long before don't feel like hell?"

"Let's see what's in my magic bag," Doc Hoff said, reaching into a sack and pulling out a small bottle of pills. He looked carefully at the decayed label before shrugging. "Two of those and you'll feel fine. Like I said, you've led me into a quite a windfall so they're free."

Princess ate three of the pills Doc Hoff had given her and promptly fell asleep. When she woke up, her mouth tasted like cotton and felt like a cinder block but her pain was gone. The battle had left her without a boot and if she wanted to keep wearing her current outfit, she would need to wrap something around her torso to keep it from falling off. Her first move was to take off the armor of one of the dead Enclave soldiers, which she quickly found didn't fit well nor was it as easy to move in as the former owners made it look. After nearly breaking her leg, she gave power armor up and took the clothes from a dead raider that had been stacked inside a shed by the Enclave along with others.

Doc Hoff's brahmin had been killed in the battle, making his newfound inventory a bittersweet victory. In exchange for showing her what he had learned about the giant mutant's control box, she helped him by spending the better part of a day collecting the loot and hiding it under a pair of dumpsters behind the gutted factory.

"I don't deal in weapons and armor," Doc Hoff said, "But I can trade it to some people who do for a pretty cap."

"Good for you," Princess said, getting the hang of controlling the mutant. Small buttons and levers covered the control box, some of which appeared to do nothing, while others seemed alter the creature's moods or send it suggestions. Doc Hoff was right about it not being perfected, but Princess had no trouble instructing it to move towards a pile of train cars and smash them. Its default setting seemed to be one of destruction, which was fine by her.

"You wander all over the place, right?" Princess said, pushing the button that made the mutant stop moving.

"You might say that," Doc Hoff said. "I go where I'm needed, but I'm mostly needed around certain settlements. Megaton, Rivet City, Canterbury Commons. I used to go to Grayditch, but…"

"I get it," Princess said. "I need to find a place with a lot of scrap metal and some raiders who aren't completely psychotic. Any suggestions?"

Doc Hoff rubbed his chin and thought for a while. "Yes. Near Big Town, actually. There's a woman I sell to who lives in the hills. If you head northeast from Big Town, across the river, there's a large scrap yard. Last I knew it was home to some raiders, but their numbers have thinned since Mayor MacCready revitalized the pl…"

"NEVER, ever, call that bastard a mayor," Princess said, her hand gripping one of her pistols. "He's a cold-hearted bully and he's retarded."

"Oh…I didn't know," Doc Hoff said. "At any rate, that's the best place I know of.

Princess sighed and looked at the giant mutant she had inherited. Did it need to eat? Maybe there was a button for that. Maybe it would eat on its own. She didn't know. "I'll go at night," she said. "I don't need word getting around about what I've got. Not yet, anyway."

"Prudent," Doc Hoff said. "But I wouldn't get too attached to it."

"Yeah, how come?" she asked, her hands on her hips.

"You've got something large and valuable," he said. "And in the wasteland, large, valuable things tend to trade hands an awful lot. Not to mention that those men you orchestrated the demise of belonged to the Enclave. Not only will they be here soon wondering where their men went, they'll want their mutant back. I don't know what high plans you have, young lady, but you'd be wise to let that thing go and try to settle your vendettas some other way."

"Pfft." Princess thought she might have to punch Doc Hoff, but he didn't seem like the type who would forgive it. What angered her was that he was right. The Enclave seemed like complete jerks and would likely be back, only more prepared. Still, the mutant was the surest way to becoming the Queen of Big Town and she had to take it.

**To be continued…**


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen.**

Princess spent the following day constructing a makeshift saddle for the behemoth, which she tied to the rudimentary leather clothing it already wore. It took some work with the control box to get the creature to kneel in a position where she could climb up its arm, onto the back. She fell once, but suffered only some bruising.

The saddle was little more than stirrups with padding. It would get her to the scrap yard Doc Hoff had mentioned where should get someone with better arts and crafts skills to make something more comfortable and bullet resistant.

Doc Hoff bid her farewell and said that he was going to Megaton. He had asked her one final time to let the mutant alone and work for him, but she had refused.

While she was filling a worn backpack with food and water scavenged from the ruins of Evergreen Mills, she turned around at the sound of a train car tipping over. There was the giant mutant, seemingly free of its directive to stay in one place, feasting on the corpses of the former raiders. It picked them up one by one by the legs and bit them in half, chewing a few times before swallowing.

She hid behind a rock and looked away until it finished. When it was done, she pushed the stop button and it went back to standing still. Confident she still had it under control, she felt relieved to know that it would feed itself when it needed to and decided to make it a point to have it feasting on radscorpions in the near future.

Thinking about Doc Hoff's warnings, she waited until nightfall before climbing onto the beast's back and looping her feet into the stirrups. Using the stars and the location of the old highway as markers, she headed towards the spot Doc Hoff said the scrap yard would be.

The mutant lumbered over the landscape stepping on smaller pieces of debris and used its hands to climb steep angled rock piles without prompting from Princess with the control box. She was both pleased and worried that the mutant was independent to a degree. It made commanding it easier, but the thought of it plucking her off its back and biting her in half kept playing out in her mind.

If there were raiders at the scrap yard, they would likely run or at least shoot at her. She thought about how she would make her entrance. It would have to be fast, but not so fast it looked like an attack. If she reached the yard in the early morning hours, she figured she could catch anyone there unawares, as those on second watch would be weary if not asleep altogether.

She passed the time by thinking about how the battle for Big Town would go. The mutant's legs would be wrapped in steel to keep from being stung. On its back would be a box of metal to deflect bullets. The mutant would tear down the walls, squash the bugs, and smash any other defenders as raiders rushed in to do the finer work.

MacCready would be brought before her and she would decide what to do with him, probably while he begged for his life.

She'd let him live if he really wanted. Maybe keep him chained to a throne or have him wear a funny hat and dance when she told him to. She had no real qualms with the other Lamplighters, so if they opted to behave and not give her any lip, they could stay. The wasteland scum would have to leave, of course. Big Town was for Little Lamplighters who grew up to be mungos, no one else.

The mutant could eat the dead and they could keep it around, feeding it like MacCready fed the bugs. If anyone came to invade, they would unleash it.

Her plans were fine for a few hours, but as the mutant strode over an abandoned camp some of the logistics began to nag at her. What would she do with the raiders once she took over? Raiders were, as a rule, lunatics who's only goals were to loot, kill, and rape. Sometimes they sold to slavers, but that was often too much trouble.

Princess wanted to think she could command them to not kill or rape everyone in Big Town, but she had to admit that a victorious band of raiders wasn't something she could likely control. Maybe the mutant could swat them, but then she thought about the swatting it was apt to do in the first place. Lucy, Knock Knock, Knick Knack, Éclair, and Joseph could be annoying…especially Zip, but she didn't like the idea of them being crushed under the mutant's feet or shot to death by raiders.

The mutant had reached the river by the time she realized this, and she pushed the button that commanded it to halt. It stood before a bridge that had collapsed into ruin long ago, but allowed a decent fording point for anyone who didn't want to completely soak themselves in irradiated water.

She decided that she didn't need the raiders. The mutant would do just fine, provided it had some shin guards and something to keep her from being shot up. That still required a visit to the scrap yard, but instead of worrying about some kind of entrance, she merely had to stomp a few raiders, leaving a few alive to do some legwork.

The horizon was turning purple, and she spurred the mutant forward, towards the collapsed bridge. Its size made traversing it easy, and she allowed herself to nod off planning to awaken when it reached the scrap yard.

She awoke to the sound of metal being bent and scuffed over rocks. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked down to see that the mutant was making its way over a wall of ruined cars and metal.

"The scrap yard," she said, yawning. Suddenly becoming aware that she might be in danger, she shook the sleep from her head and scanned the area for life. She found it walking slowly down a path created by two burnt out buses. It was an old man dressed in grimy, fancy clothes. He had a serene look on his face, as though he didn't know a giant mutant had kicked its way into the scrap yard.

"Hey," Princess shouted. "Hold it right there or you'll get squashed."

The man kept walking closer, the same serene look was on his face only it was clear from his eyes that he saw her. She had heard that once mungos reach a certain age, their brains turn to mush. "Watch it, mush brain," she shouted, guiding the mutant closer.

The man stopped and examined the mutant like it was a booby trap. He reached into his pocked and pulled out a gun, which he fired twice before Princess could react.

The stirrups holding her in place came loose and she was falling backward. Crouching into a ball, she avoided landing on her head, but the air was sent out of her lungs and her rifle dug into her back.

Unable to move, she was helpless when a foot pushed her flat and a gun barrel was leveled over her face.

"Crushing an old man with a mutant," the man said, "That's cold-hearted."

Winded, angry, and having been once again placed at the mercy of an old mungo, Princess could do nothing but snarl and try to catch her breath.

The man looked up at the mutant and saw the control box that had fallen, undamaged, nearby. "There's quite a bit going on here that I'd like to ask you about, but perhaps we should start at the beginning. My name is Daniel Littlehorn. I represent Littlehorn and Associates. Who might you be?"

He waited for Princess to catch her breath and compose herself. "Princess," she said. "I don't represent shit."

"Can't say as I blame you," Littlehorn said. "Now how did you come by that piece of work?"

"None of you're business," she said.

Littlehorn pulled the hammer back on the revolver. "I can plainly see that box over there is the device for controlling it," he said. "If I wanted it, I could take it and shoot you through the face, so why don't you just tell me what I want to know. We might be able to help each other."

With the gun in her face, she didn't have much to gain or lose, so she spoke. "I think they were called the Enclave. They had captured it by Evergreen Mills."

"I see," Littlehorn said, looking perturbed. "Well, that's not desirable for a number of reasons, not the least of which the Enclave wanting their pet back. I take it all the raiders at the mill were slain?"

Princess nodded and Littlehorn clicked his tongue. "Too bad. I had plans for them, but perhaps you'll work out better."

"I've got plans of my own," Princess said, angry over once again being under the thumb of a mungo and once gain being roped into their stupid plans.

"I'm sure they're quite grandiose, but mine will net you no small amount of fame and caps. I have a bug problem, you see…"

**To be continued…**


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen.**

Some strange people had come out of a shack at the other end of the scrap yard to cover the mutant up with shredded tarps. They were dressed in dirty, torn clothes like Littlehorn's. They were all pale, clearly not used to being outside much.

Princess stood patiently inside Littlehorn's shack, which consisted of his desk at one end of a large room and multiple smaller desks in between where the weird people sat and worked at typewriters and old computers.

Littlehorn now sat at his desk and was shuffling some papers. "Have a seat," he said, and Princess sat in a small wooden chair. She had been allowed to gather her weapons, although Littlehorn had told her he would shoot her if she tried anything.

"Quite a twist of fate, really," Littlehorn said. "However, nothing is set in stone and we can't take chances with poor planning. I must say, your idea to armor that thing's legs and lay siege to Big Town was spot on, however I'm a little curious about your ideas for reconstruction."

"Recon-what?"

"What are you going to put in its place?"

"A town without stupid bugs and stupid mayors, that's what," Princess said.

Littlehorn seemed to ponder what he was going to say next, rather than her answer. Princess got the idea that what she wanted wouldn't necessarily be what he wanted in the long run. "I suppose no bugs is an admirable goal," he said. "They've made striking out a living in this area for anyone not trading with Big Town a tad more difficult. Raiders have to raid, you see, otherwise they're not raiders."

"You want to help the raiders?" Princess said. "No one wants to help raiders but raiders, and you don't look like one."

"I'm not," he said, leaning back in his chair and touching his fingertips together. His face had gone out of the light streaming in from the dirty window to his left, making him look like a headless torso with steepled fingers. "Have you ever heard of Feng Shui?"

"Is it like a mushroom?"

"No, it's Chinese," Littlehorn said. "I really don't have time to get into it, but it's essentially the idea that the arrangement of objects in a room can create certain…energies. This room for example is arranged a certain way to allow for optimum performance. Much like wires in a machine, everything has to go a certain way. Understand?"

Princess shook her head and thought again about the prospect of Littlehorn being senile. The more he talked, the sorrier she was about having asked about his sympathy towards raiders.

"The wasteland is no different. A settlement like what Big Town has become throws off the balance. It needs to go back to what it was, a place of…well, no bugs."

It was now obvious that he was hiding his true motive, but she couldn't guess what it was, not with his talk of Fungus and Sway. "Can we get to the plan, please?"

"Yes, of course," he said, sliding into full view. "I've hired some men to work on the beast's armor. They'll accompany you during a nighttime raid. You will act as a diversion while the two hired men make their way into the radscorpion hive and kill the queen. Once that has been done, the creatures will no longer reproduce and Big Town will have to fend for itself once more."

"Two men? That's it?"

"Two is all we'll need considering who we have," Littlehorn said. "In fact, why don't you go and meet them? They've both been briefed on the plan, which I hope to carry out tonight now that you're here."

She went outside, leaving the employees of Littlehorn and Associates to their work, and made her way over to where the mutant was standing beneath a blue tarp while two men in metal armor fitted its legs with pieces of steel.

One of the men was younger with shoulder length light colored hair and a face that reminded her of a piece of wood for all its expression. The other man was bald, his hair seemingly having migrated south to form a mighty beard.

Each carried large, metal hammers that Princess recognized as being Super Sledges. Unlike a normal hammer that worked on muscle and gravity, the items had a gizmo in the head that did something to increase the force with which a person could strike. No Lamplighter to her knowledge had ever been able to lift one, but they had been scavenged plenty of times from muties.

The older of the two looked up and smiled. "You must be the princess," he said. "Tonight, we go to war and will kill many enemies and take much in the way of plunder."

"Er, yes we will," Princess said, not liking the good natured manner in which the man spoke about violence. She liked fighting as much as anyone, but you didn't talk about it like it was eating candy.

"I am Ymir," the bearded one said. "This is my son, Jotun."

Jotun didn't acknowledge that he had been referred to and instead kept at his work. The mutant also seemed to be taking no notice of the metal leggings it was being given. "Are you sure you're up for this? Those radscorpions are no joke," Princess said.

"We have the necklaces that make them not attack," Ymir said. "I'm sure they will change their minds once we strike their queen."

Ymir was crazy and his son was stupid, Princess thought. Not a good combination for them, but it would work fine for her and Littlehorn. She supposed that two raiders were better than a gang, but something nagged her about what Littlehorn desired for Big Town. Technically, going back to what it had been could either mean a ghost town or a town under siege. She didn't feel like being the queen of either, but thought if Big Town kept to itself and let raiders go about their business elsewhere, she and Littlehorn would see eye to eye.

"Just one thing you have to remember," she said, and this time Jotun turned. He appeared confused and angry, while Ymir had the expression of a person bracing to be told something they don't want to hear. "The redhead. The…mayor. He's mine. Got it?"

Jotun kept looking annoyed, but Ymir smiled. "I understand," he said. "They mayor is yours. We have nothing personal with anyone there, merely the caps Littlehorn is paying us."

Princess smiled. People with caps on their mind were at least predictable and easier to control, provided you had what they wanted. "Good. Keep up the legwork, I don't want my friend here being stung."

**To be continued…**


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen.**

Ymir and Jotun had time to replace the saddle on the mutant's back with the cab of a car they scavenged from the scrap yard. They shored up the sides, leaving Princess an enclosed area that offered some protection from gunfire.

Together, they hashed out the plan in more detail. Once the queen radscorpion was dead, Ymir and Jotun would retreat and come back later. Princess, once she subdued MacCready, would likewise retreat and come back once the radscorpions had gone.

The plan she didn't tell Ymir or Jotun was that she intended to stay and force MacCready to relinquish his authority to her. Once she was in charge, Ymir, Jotun, and the radscorpions could get lost and Big Town would be hers.

At dusk they set out for Big Town. Princess sat in the cab atop the mutant and guided it towards the river while Ymir and Jotun ran ahead. She was surprised to feel flutters in her stomach and for some reason could only think about MacCready and his stupid face.

Before long she could see the roofs on the houses of Big Town sticking up over the wall of junk that protected it. She ducked when the first bullet bounced off the front of the car cab and adjusted the controls to make the mutant move faster and be more aggressive. Ymir and Jotun would have to look after themselves from here on out, she thought as the cab lurched from the mutant crossing the moat around Big Town and scaling the wall.

Laser beams and bullets filled the top of the cab, riddling the roof with holes but the armor around the sides kept Princess safe. Big Town's resistance was stiffer than she had expected and she cursed herself for not thinking MacCready would be prepared for a large scale assault.

She thought of Littlehorn shooting the straps that held her saddle earlier and spurred the mutant to greater aggression with the control box. It wasn't the end of the world if she fell off, but it wouldn't be good.

All told, there wasn't as much screaming as she would have suspected. There were shouts, but it was the sound of men and women barking orders at one another, telling where to take cover and who to get inside where it was safe.

There was a loud _thunk_ of ancient switches being flipped and suddenly the world was one of harsh, white light. She had to look at the bottom of the cab to be able to see, and could hear the mutant roar in anger. They had hit her with spotlights, both blinding the mutant and making it so she couldn't make anything out on the ground even had she dared poke her head above the protective siding.

"Damn," she said, trying to determine where the spotlights were so she could smash them. The thought there might be one to the right and guided the mutant in that direction, hoping he would step on it.

He did, and while the light dimmed, there were plenty more. She could hear more voice close by and from the snatches of sentences she picked up, they were planning something.

And if they were doing that, it meant there might not be many radscorpions underfoot, and if that was the case, something had either gone very right over at the hive, or very wrong.

Something landed next to her. She looked at the small, green egg shaped object and her stomach clenched. Grabbing it, she threw it over the edge of the cab just as it exploded, knocking the cab crooked.

The mutant howled with pain and from the sounds of it, had found a building to smash. She swore louder, thoughts of having to rebuild leading into thoughts about the mutant dying. If it didn't live, she wasn't going to have much ground to stand on in her bid for Princess of Big Town. Plus, what was she going to do even if it did survive? Sit in the cab forever with the box nearby in case someone got ideas?

She pounded the floor of the cab and screamed. Why had these thoughts come now and not two days ago? Long-term planning had never been her forte, it had always been that bastard MacCready's thing.

Just kill MacCready, she thought. Or wound him. Forget Big Town, forget being a leader, just make him see.

She pushed a button on the control box that would make the mutant act of its own accord until told otherwise and fixed the box to her belt. Gripping her assault rifle, she leapt over the side of the cab and slid down the mutant's bicep as far it would take her before hitting the ground.

Rolling to a stand, she saw through spotted vision there were few if any radscorpions swarming around the mutant's legs. There were, however, two dozen or so people with ropes doing a losing job of tying the monster's legs together.

With the lights no longer shining in her eyes, she took aim at the four that were left and fired, knocking them out. That left torches and few smaller bulbs left to light Bug Town, soon to be Big Town, she thought.

A girl came at her brandishing a pipe. Rather than move to block, Princess slammed the butt of her gun into the girl's face. No Little Lamplighter, the girl hadn't expected such a vicious attack and fell to her knees, clutching her bleeding mouth.

"MacCready," Princess said, hissing the name through clenched teeth. She grabbed the girl by her wrist and pulled her up. "Where is MacCready?"

The lower half of her face was a bloody ruin and her eyes were white and round in the gloom. "T-the nest. I think," she said, her words muffled from her swelling lips and perhaps a few missing teeth.

"Where the fuck is it," Princess said, shaking the girl. "Tell me or I'll bust you more."

The girl pointed in a direction past where the mutant was rampaging and Princess shoved her to the ground. The others were busy not being stomped by her monster and she hoped it wouldn't kill anyone she liked.

Princess ran in the direction the girl had pointed, dodging fleeing townspeople. None she met recognized her for who she was, a plus she hadn't expected. She ran down into a drainage gulley that trickled irradiated water and up the steep bank at the other end to where the nest was.

Junked cars had been piled to make a kind of funnel. Ringed by torches and the bones of raiders, the worn dirt path led to another heap of the junk, at the base of which a cave had been dug.

The first figure she saw was Ymir. He was still carrying his hammer and it dripped with blood and radscorpion guts. He wore a look of cheerful exasperation, while his son Jotun, who was three steps behind, was sweating and sporting a species of terrified anger. "Mission failed," Ymir shouted as he ran past her. "See you around."

"What? Mission failed?"

A black wave of radscorpions boiled up from the edge of the downward sloping cave. Princess backed up and was ready to run when she saw the two colossal pincers crest the edge of the cave and sweep over the smaller radscorpions. As the best came into view, Princess' mouth curled into a snarl of anger.

There was MacCready, riding on the giant scorpion queen's back dressed from the neck down in Enclave power armor. On his head he still wore that stupid U.S. military helmet.

"Well, well," he said, patting the radscorpion's armored hide. "Look who it is. You just made your last mistake, Princess. You're bug shit, now. Walking bug shit."

He had a rifle with him, and he took aim at her as the radscorpion came forward. MacCready was a good shot and he had her on open ground. If he meant what he was saying, she thought, it was all over.

The gun fired and she felt the heat of the bullet zip over her skull, singing a few hairs. Shooting while on the back of a giant bug didn't seem to be something he had practiced and she used the opportunity to run in a zigzag pattern back towards the drainage ditch. Squashing a giant bug required a giant foot, and she had brought just such a thing with her.

**To be continued…**


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty.**

She stumbled going down the steep hill and landed in the trickle of water running through the long ditch that separated the hive from the rest of town. She could hear the radscorpions coming, their hard exoskeletons clattered together like bone chimes next to the shuffling of their giant queen.

Princess got to her feet and ran back to the town's front gate where the mutant was rampaging. The town's defenders had no success in tying up its feet and most had retreated, some foolishly to the wooden structures the monster was kicking down.

The open guard shack by the bridge was undamaged and unoccupied. Princess went towards it in a wide arc away from the mutant, using shadows to conceal herself. She leaped the wooden sill and landed inside.

"Princess!" It was Lucy. "What are you doing here?"

She was wearing a grimy blue sun dress and combat fatigue pants with scrap metal knee pads. Two first aid kits were strapped to her hips and she held a stimpak in her hand with the needle broken in half. She was sweating and looked like she had taken a tumble through the dust.

"Don't get involved," Princess said. "This is between me and MacCready now."

"You did this!" Lucy shouted. "Princess…I should kick your ass. You seriously injured people and you might have killed a few more!"

Princess hadn't counted on this. She couldn't believe how much else she hadn't counted on, not with all that time she had to think. "It's done," she said. "And I mean it, just stay out of this."

"No," Lucy said, eying the control box on Princess' back. "I don't know what your game is, but it's over."

Lucy leaped like a starving mole rat, hitting Princess high in the shoulder and knocking her backward. Princess struggled but her gun and the control box made maneuvering hard. Lucy was on top of her, raining clumsy but powerful blows over her head. Ignoring the punches, Princess drove her fist into Lucy's stomach just bellow the rib cage and followed it by giving her a hard jab to the jaw.

Lucy fell forward like a wet sack and Princess rolled her off to the side. "Sorry," she said, and Lucy replied with a half conscious moan.

The queen radscorpion had now scuttled into the main street and was facing the giant super mutant. It raised its claws in the same attack posture as its smaller counterparts and came forward. Princess reached for the control box to give the creature some direction, but as she began pushing buttons, she realized nothing was happening. "Shit," she said, smacking the side of the box. "What a piece of junk!"

As she began searching the sides of the box for a way to open it and look at the circuitry inside, the two monsters collided. The scorpion's pincers clamped around mutant's armored leggings, bending the metal, while its tail arced forward.

The mutant caught the stinger in time, avoiding being pierced through the chest. MacCready, who still sat on the radscorpion's back, threw a small glass container, breaking it on the monster's shin. This prompted the smaller radscorpions to surge forward and crawl up the mutant's legs using their mother's claws to aid them.

No one was on the street now. Princess got the control box open and saw it was a mass of wires and flat green pieces of plastic. Everything was loose, but whether or not it was supposed to be that way was a mystery. She pawed over the jumble and was unable to tell what had gone wrong.

"Hell," she said, looking at the mutant wrestle with the radscorpion. Now she was unsure of who she wanted to win. If the mutant succeeded, there would be no stopping it and it would level Big Town, just as Littlehorn had wanted.

The smaller radscorpions had made their way up the brute's legs and were stinging. The effect was to cause the mutant's legs to wobble, which left the monster open for a forceful jab from the queen, which went into the mutant's shoulder rather than its throat.

It howled with anger and pain, and turned the stinger counterclockwise like it was someone's head it was trying to twist off. There was a wet popping sound, and the teardrop shaped stinger came free, oozing green fluid from both it and the tail stump. Princess heard MacCready shout and saw him roll off the radscorpion's back away from the dripping poison.

The mutant brought the stinger down in the center of the radscorpion's nest of black eyes, making another wet popping noise as its armor was pierced. Princess could see the stinger twitching, pumping powerful neurotoxins directly into the radscorpion's exposed, damaged brain.

Its entire body seized for a moment before going limp. The legs curled up beneath the body, flipping it onto its side. The super mutant let out a roar of triumph, but sunk to its knees and was swarmed by more radscorpions.

"A tie," Princess said. "That works."

She turned to leave, but felt something grip her ankle. It was Lucy. Princess tried to pull away, not wanting to have to stomp on her head, but felt something pinch her leg. She looked to see a syringe hanging from her calf, and Lucy's swollen jaw set in a hard look.

"What did you…" her tongue felt like it weighed fourteen pounds and the words were like wet sand. The rest of her body felt the same way, and it was becoming harder to stand.

She hit the floor but didn't feel it.

**To be continued…**


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One.**

She woke up later in the dark on a cold dirty stone floor. The only light was from the gap beneath the door, one that locked from the outside. Her entire body hurt, as though she had been beaten while unconscious.

Her weapons were gone. She had been stripped and redressed in a cloth sack with holes cut for the head and arms. After a brief exploration of her cell, she determined she had been locked in a supply closet.

After hours of sitting in the dark thinking about what they would do with her, the door opened. Two men she didn't recognize flanked one she did, MacCready. He was carrying a length of rope and a policeman's nightstick. The two men next to him were armed with machine pistols.

"If you give me any trouble, you're dead," MacCready said. "You're dead anyway, but if you fight now I get to do it myself."

He waited, seemingly hoping she would attack him so he could be the one to kill her. She looked into his face and saw a familiar coldness there. It shined through the dirt and blood like the first stars that came out in the evening, and while it meant the end of her, it was strangely comforting. It meant he would do what had to be done for the good of everyone else, including her.

She stood up and smiled as he braced himself. "Do whatever you want, asshole," she said. "You always do." There was not hostility in her voice, just the tone of casual observation. "So how's it going to be, firing squad, hanging?"

"Dinner," MacCready said, and seeing the face she made added "Ew, no. We're not eating you. I'd eat shit first. You're getting fed to the radscorpions."

"How long will the hive last with the queen dead?" Princess asked.

MacCready laughed. "Lesko says they'll single out the biggest one and start feedin' it until it gets bigger and starts laying eggs. They've already carved up the queen and that fucking mutant you brought over, but they'll need all the food they can get so you're on the menu, bitch."

"Fine," she said, holding her hands in front of her. "Let's get it over with."

He tied her wrists, leaving a length to lead her by. She followed him up a flight of creaking wooden stairs and out into Big Town's main street. The entire town had come out, forming a pathway up to the radscorpion's nest where MacCready led her.

The people were loud before getting to the nest, shouting jeers and insults. Most of the people, Princess surmised, didn't know her personally, but a few did. She recognized them not so much from their voices but from the nature of the insults tossed, references to old wrongs and personal observations likely made safely behind her back up until now.

She was led to the mouth of the nest, which sloped down at a steep angle into darkness beneath a pile of ruined cars and scavenged junk. The sound of the radscorpions' movements could be heard and she thought she could see them moving.

"They haven't left the nest because we've been bringing them food," MacCready said. "So they're all down there waiting for you."

She stood there with her hands tied, waiting to be shoved forward, but nothing happened. "Am I supposed to walk down there or something?" Princess said. "Because that's stupid."

He shoved her to the ground and kicked her in the stomach. "Stupid? What's stupid is you acting like you own the place," he said, rolling her over with his boot and straddling her. "What's stupid is you thinking you're any kind of a leader."

She felt his fist crash into her jaw, then the rest of her face. As he beat her, she couldn't help but wonder if he was hitting her as hard as he could. Likely he wanted her conscious for when the radscorpions came to finish her.

He stood and picked her up by the front of her makeshift dress. She felt him slip something made of glass down her shirt, then punch it, causing it to break. "There's a tunnel way in the back. Go through it," he whispered, and shoved her hard down the steep dip of the tunnel.

She rolled down the hill to the sound of cheers, feeling confusion and pain in her chest from where the broken glass was digging into her. She was covered in darkness when she bumped against the first radscorpion. It scuttled over her, but didn't pinch or sting and neither did the others.

Hands still tied, she got up and stumbled through the dark, cutting her bare feet on the sharp rocks of the cave floor and bumping into walls as well as tripping over radscorpions.

The nest became hot as she went deeper and a sheen of sweat broke out over her skin, mixing with the dirt and blood. The sour smell of the radscorpions mixed with the stink of rot from the corpses they were eating made her want to vomit, but there was nothing in her stomach to throw up.

Princess walked as far as she could before bumping into a wall. She sat down and tried to take deep breaths of the thick, rank air and let the buzzing in her head subside. Lack of food, the sedative, and the beating she had taken now weighed on her and later she would think she had fallen asleep at some point, but it was hard to tell without light.

When she felt better she began to move again, keeping close to the wall and looking for the tunnel MacCready told her about. She had time to think. What was his game? Was he really trying to save her or just prolong her misery? He could be sneaky, but letting her wander around in the nest looking for a tunnel that didn't exist all while thinking he cared for her until the pheromone wore off didn't sound like something he would do.

Then again, letting her get away didn't sound like him either.

The tunnel ended up being a few inches wider than her shoulders. By the time she found it, the radscorpions were acting aggressive and she was glad only the smallest of them would have been able to get through the tunnel with some effort. She guessed the tunnel might be for ventilation, as there was a warm breeze drifting down it. She earned herself more scrapes and bruises going through and had never been so glad to feel the night air of the wasteland on her skin when she finally reached the surface.

The lights of Bug Town were behind her a good distance, and looking at it she realized MacCready's game. Dressed in a bag alone in the wasteland, she wouldn't last long and her end would likely be slower than being torn apart and eaten by a nest of ravenous radscorpions.

"Thought you'd died down there," said MacCready from behind her. She spun around and caught sight of him. No longer dressed in power armor, he looked more like himself. He was carrying a bundle under his arm that looked like her gear.

"Was that the plan?" she asked, knowing it wasn't. "What the hell are you doing?"

He threw the bundle at her feet and turned around as she got dressed. She noted he had separated her bullets from her guns and turned around to face her when she started to reload. "I'm giving you a second chance, one you don't fucking deserve."

"Gee, thanks," she said. "Big fuckin' deal. This entire world is a shit hole."

"Some places are less shitty than others, like Bug Town," he said. "The radscorpions protect us from raiders and mutants and that gives us time to make things semi-fucking decent. But you couldn't fucking appreciate that, so fuck you."

Her throat began to close up and it felt like there was a fire behind her eyes. "Fuck you, MacCready," she said. "Just…fuck you."

"Why?"

"What?"

"I asked why. Why do you fucking hate me? Okay, I slugged you that one time when you wanted to be the princess of Little Lamplight. I'm fucking sorry. You hear me? I'm sorry I fucking broke your damn nose and became mayor. We don't live there anymore, we live her. It's a big fucking town and you didn't have to deal with me if you didn't want to. Hell, you could've left and come around to visit when you felt like. But no, you had to be a bitch when you got into town and then you had to bring that fucking mutant around along with those two slaver assholes. What the hell is your problem?"

"I love you." The words had come out of her mouth like flatulence, the kind where the mind wasn't paying attention and let the body act unsupervised. As soon as they were out, the urge to claw them back in from the air with her hands hit her and she covered her mouth.

MacCready said nothing. In the dim light, she could see his mouth hanging open. "You what?"

To hell with it, she thought. She had been ready to die several times in the past few weeks, what was this by comparison? "I love you," she said. "I used to have a crush on you, but then you hit me and took over and I thought I hated you. I did hate you. I love you, too, and that doesn't make any sense."

"No, it doesn't," he said. "Nothing about you makes and fucking sense."

"I know."

They were silent again, then MacCready spoke. "Alright, so you love me. I don't have time for that shit. Running Bug Town isn't like Little Lamplight, it's in the open and we got new people coming and going all the time. I don't have a girlfriend and I don't want one, least of all a crazy bitch like you."

The fire behind her eyes was dimming, and the tears she felt were slowly drawing off. She wiped the ones from her face, shook her head and rolled her shoulders. "Why the second chance?"

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe it's because you're from Little Lamplight and did a good job guarding the back gate. It pisses me off when Little Lamplighters get their shit killed, even if they have turned into mungos."

"Do you hate me?" she asked.

"I hate most people," he said. "You're in the top three, right behind that fucker Eulogy Jones and whoever runs that fuckin' Enclave. President Eden, or whatever his fuckin' name is."

"You can add a man named Littlehorn to that list," she said. "He lives up in the scrap yard. He's the one who hooked me up with those two freaks and armored up the mutant. He wants this town flattened."

"Well shit, thanks, Princess," MacCready said. "I guess if you bring me the fucker's head you can live in Bug Town with us."

"Really?"

"No. I might be the mayor, but when I say fuckin' jump people don't ask me how high like they did in Lamplight. They'd rip you apart regardless of what I said or what you did. They'd probably fuck me up for helping you like I'm doing, so maybe you could show your love for me and not be seen around her for a long time. Like, ever again."

She nodded. "Okay. I guess I'll go to Rivet City."

"No, we see a lot of people coming and going from there. On the other side of the river, a little south of the memorial, there's a guy who gives boat rides to a place called Point Something or some fuckin' shit. I heard it's a good place to make a living for people who've got the hair, and you did manage to capture a giant fucking mutie and ride the fuckin' thing, so…"

"Thanks," she said, rubbing her eyes. "I guess I'll go. Just one thing."

"What?"

She swung and imagined her fist going through the back of his head as it connected with his chin. It was like she was riding a Jet high, and could see everything in slow motion. The ripples on his skin from her fist, his eyes rolling back into his head as his head snapped back and he toppled backwards.

Before he could get to his feet, she jumped on him and pinned his shoulders to the ground. As his eyes swam from confusion to anger, she made her final move and planted a wet kiss on his dusty lips.

"Good bye," she said, getting off him and jogging west towards the river, hopefully getting out of rifle range before MacCready could gather his wits.

**The End. **


End file.
